


Highs and Lows

by SophieRipley



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Injury, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Male-Female Friendship, Rejection, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-17 23:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7290460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieRipley/pseuds/SophieRipley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nighthowler crisis is over, but Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps still have to adjust to their new lives in the aftermath. The realities of love, loss, and on-the-job risks are explored by the duo.  This story is set post-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Disappointments

They say fate is fickle. At least, they say they do; Nick had never actually heard anyone utter that particular phrase, but he had always believed it nonetheless. After all, fate had made him a hustler on the streets, and fate had made him a cop. Fickle as the cards at the gambling table. In the last year, Nick Wilde's life had improved quite a bit. He'd become an upstanding citizen, and more: an officer of the law, partnered with a woman who had become his best friend.

It was a strange feeling, having a friend. Oh, he'd called many a predator friend in years gone by, but he'd never truly had a real connection with any of them. Even Finnick, with whom he still had infrequent contact, was never more than a means to an end. But Judy…he spent time with her for the simple pleasure of it. Nick lay in his dark apartment awake staring at the wet-stained ceiling, his old lumpy pillow underneath him, and he sighed. It was almost time for his alarm to go off for work, and he hadn't slept again. This was the fourth night in a row, and he could see no end to it. The memory came back to him unbidden, as it had every five minutes since that evening four days ago.

Nick had gotten to work early, for once. Before Judy, even, which was the point. When the tiny bunny had gotten to the homeroom, all ears and optimism and smiles, Nick had a cup of coffee waiting for her, made just like she enjoyed it. He'd had it all planned. They would work their shift like usual, but Nick would offer to take her to dinner. And once there, stuffing their faces with blueberries and pie, he'd ask her out. And just as he'd planned, he greeted her with a sly grin and her coffee.

"Mornin', Carrots," said the fox, handing her the hot cup. She took it with a smile and sipped it, ears wiggling cutely.

"Hey Nick," said Judy only after sipping her coffee. "You're early, I think that's a first. Hey, so I had a thought about the Moosebridge case…." The day passed as it usually did, except for the pit of nervousness in Nick's gut, and Judy seemed to have a bit more energy than usual. She was a bunny though, so it was impossible to gauge.

The day finally ended and the two of them clocked out together. Outside, Nick leaned against the building in a poor attempt at looking casual. He had been so good at faking ease before, so why did his tail suddenly feel like it didn't fit right? It didn't make sense, but he pushed it out of his mind because Judy was giving him a benignly-puzzled look.

"So, I was thinking," said Nick, then he cleared his throat. "Let's get dinner together. There's that place down the road from my apartment we've been meaning to try."

"Oh!" Judy's confusion was replaced with a contrite smile. "I'm sorry, Nick, I'm going out with someone tonight. I'll come by after though, if you'd like."

"Sure," said Nick. How could a fox's heart pound this hard and not burst? "Seeing a friend? Anyone I know?" He put a grin on.

"Not a friend. We're dating!" And with that, Judy hopped away with nary a backward glance, her ears erect in excitement.

Nick felt like he'd been punched in the gut. It took him five full minutes to peel himself off the wall, and when he did he wandered home as if drunk. For the next four hours he sat staring at the wall in the growing dark, unmoving and unthinking, steeped in the roiling boil of emotion. His favorite pillow, usually a comfort to him when he was upset, did nothing to ease the storm within. That lingering odor of cinnamon that no amount of washing could get out didn't penetrate the haze of crisis; the threadbare old thing simply...lay under him like any other piece of furniture. So deep was his fugue that when finally Judy came, she had to knock three times before he roused enough to notice. Only then did he get up and open the door for her. He walked back into the apartment proper without looking at her.

"Hey, Nick…Nick, it's really dark in here," said the bunny, flicking on the light. Nick flinched and squinted against it while his eyes adjusted.

"How'd the date go," asked Nick flatly.

"It was great," said Judy cautiously, frowning. Her ears bent in concern. "Lily is a great listener, are you alright?"  
Nick was done. He shook his head and went to the door again, opening it for Judy.

"I'm not feeling well," said Nick lamely, avoiding her eyes. When she questioned him, he merely shook his head and stood there with his hand on the door. She left with a promise to check in on him in the morning. First thing Nick did when she left was call in sick until after his next day off, giving him the next six days to brood; this wouldn't harm his status at the station as he hadn't taken a single sick day all year, but even if it would have, he wouldn't have cared just then. And then he brooded, ignoring the knocks on his door the next morning…and the next evening…and the phone calls every day since.

Thinking about it again felt like a knife twisted in his gut, but it was a sensation he'd been feeling every five minutes for four days so the impact had lessened. At this point, he was actually almost numb. Numb enough that when his phone went off he actually answered it, albeit silently. It was Judy.  
Naturally.

"Nick," began a very concerned-sounding Judy, "please come have breakfast with me. I haven't seen you in days and I'm worried." Nick took a slow, deep breath in the silence that followed and released it just as slowly.

"Kay," said Nick simply, and then he let the phone fall to the bed beside him. He laid there motionless for a few minutes gathering his energy, then got up to shower and dress in something he hadn't been wearing for four days.

He made it to their usual restaurant with enough time to spare to get through a whole coffee and have a refill poured before Judy arrived. When she did, she was in her uniform and her ears were pressed down: she was not happy at all. She sat in the booth opposite Nick, ordered a coffee, and met his eyes precisely once before studying the table. Nick had an easy grin on his face, but she'd known him for more than a year and could see the pain behind it.

The silence stretched on for long enough that she had received her coffee before he spoke.

"So. Lily, huh?" Judy had been studying Nick's tie, and when he spoke, she looked away entirely.

"Are you surprised?" Her tone was one of sadness, even regret, but there was a certain edge to it he picked up on.

"Have you ever surprised me, Judy?" His tone was as much easy humor as hers was sadness, but it too had an edge, and when he uttered her proper name a thrill of adrenaline shot through her. He had only ever called her Judy one time that she could remember, and that was when he thought she was dead.

She reached across the table and grabbed his paw in hers, gripping it tightly. He did nothing to assist or hamper her, but his hot, rough paw closed around hers as well once she had gotten there.  
"I pined for you, Nick," murmured Judy, speaking to her navel. "For nine months I hinted and prodded and you never once showed any interest. What was I supposed to do?"

"I deserve that," said Nick evenly, and he squeezed her paw; a great pressure had lifted from his chest and he breathed properly for the first time in four days, but it wasn't from relief. Nor was it from despair: he had given up. It was the most painful and most liberating thing he had ever done, and Judy saw the change in his green eyes as she looked up. His smile was genuine again; rueful maybe, but genuine.

"I'm sorry, Nick," said Judy, and she genuinely meant it. "Maybe we were both cowards. And I love you, Nick. You know I do. But I've moved on." Her eyes dropped again, and the twitching in her nose belied her words. She drew his huge paw to her face and pushed his wrist to her face, inhaling the smell of the moisturizing shampoo she had bought him on his fur. Then, she placed a single, gentle kiss on his wrist.

"I'll give you as much time as you need," said the bunny as she stood, his paw still clasped in hers, "but when you're ready…I'd like my best friend back? Please?" Nick heaved a sigh and turned to gaze out the window at the bustling Zootopian morning for a long moment. Then, he turned to her with a grin.

"I'll see you on Monday, Carrots," snarked Nick with a wink. She offered a shy, uncertain smile in return and turned to leave.  
As their paws slid apart, they both somehow knew that their love story had yet to truly begin. After all…fate was fickle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a completed story I've published elsewhere; I intend to upload a chapter a day until it's all up. I welcome any and all constructive feedback!  
> Also, I'm a bit new to this format of writing, so if I have left out tags or anything that are important, please let me know.


	2. Pulse

It was a startling realization the first time Nick Wilde had noticed that rabbits had faster heartbeats than foxes. His own averaged around a hundred beats per minute at rest. Judy's though was so much faster. He had first noticed her hundred thirty-five beats-per-minute heart rate one afternoon after a slow day at the precinct. They were waiting at their favorite diner for drinks and Judy had laid her head down. Nick reached out to grasp her wrist, intending to shake her a little, tease her for being tired, and his fingers naturally found the artery in her wrist and he started counting, his head cocked to the side.

"What?" Judy asked him, looking up. She didn't pull away, but did look concerned. Nick shook his head.

"Your heart is beating really fast," said the fox simply, pulling away as their drinks came.

"Not really," said Judy, checking her own pulse. "Yeah, that's my normal heart rate. Why, what's yours?"

He couldn't help but to think about it periodically, especially now. The waiting room smelled like all hospitals did: astringent, sterile, with the barest hint of blood and sick underneath. He was alone in the crowd of fellow ZPD officers, his thoughts his only focus. He barely noticed Chief Bogo quietly talking to Lily, the bunny's concern for Judy making her forget that she was the smallest one there. Everything around him seemed to fade to grey, all detail and all attention homing on the things directly in front of his face: his paws, hanging between his knees as he sat on the padded yet still too hard chair.

Judy's heartbeat was so fast. Was it still? Or had it…no. He wouldn't think about it. He couldn't. Instead, he did the next most painful thing and thought about what led to this.

Two days ago. They were on a stake-out. The car was dark, quiet, and warm, and Nick could clearly smell Judy's shampoo. They had started the stakeout talking about her girlfriend, Nick's new weasel neighbor, a television show that had just started coming on; the conversation had lapsed into a comfortable silence and they watched the house carefully. There was a drug trafficking problem in the city lately, and they had traced it back to the owner of this hovel of a house: they were simply waiting for the suspects to show up so they could arrest them.

Somewhere along the line, someone had gotten sloppy. The suspects, a pair of wolves, knew they were there and disabled the car with a well-placed sniper shot to the engine block, while simultaneously a lackey fetched something from the house and fled. Judy, stubborn as she was, refused to accept the failure and in the aftermath of the incident she scoured all the information and evidence they had for some clue where the suspects might go. It took a day, but finally a break was had and the ZPD had a good idea where to go.

Hopps was put in the strike team raiding the fall-back location. The recon squad ascertained the building was indeed being used and plans were laid out. It was a slick two-flanked attack. Nick, stuck in the control van organizing the strike, was left virtually powerless when the doors were kicked in and gunfire began blazing. In the movies, firefights always seem to take a very long time, but in reality it was over in less than twenty seconds. And in the piercing silence that followed, the yell rang out: "Officer down!"

The sight of the tiny body that was carried out made Nick's heart stop. He was already moving to help when they came out, but his speed redoubled when he saw the fragile, limp, miniscule leporine form cradled in a rhino's arms. He saw what had happened when she was placed on the ground: a shot had ripped through her body armor. The hole in her vest seemed enormous compared to Judy, and how could that much blood fit in her body? He was allowed to kneel by her simply by virtue of his size: the others were too big to get the vest off without hurting her further. So he knelt. So he pulled off the spent vest. So he applied direct pressure to the wound, staining his hands with her blood, the fur matting in clumps with the sticky, thick fluid. So he felt her rapid, failing heartbeat underneath his hands. So he yelled at her to fight, to breathe, to stay awake, and kept doing so until the ambulance came and he was pulled off of her.

And now he was in a nearly silent waiting room, almost the entire precinct there with him and all of them locked in their own worry. 

Only Bogo was able to speak, and even he had tissues clenched in one massive hand, his eyes bloodshot. Nick wringed his blood-stained paws and took a gasping breath to avoid succumbing to his own tears. His paws were nothing but a reminder now. His normally orange fur was rust-red now. The normally smooth and brushed fur matted, clumped, cracking. His paws from the tips of his claws to half way up his wrists were practically covered in rabbit blood, the stink of it thick in his nostrils, coppery and viscous. He could hardly see the thin spot in the fur on his left second finger, where he had a scar from a mishap with a mouse a few years ago. No longer dexterous, the fingers hung limp in shock.

A heavy paw fell on his shoulder. Bogo had stepped over from where he had been talking to Judy's girlfriend and knelt next to him.  
"Go wash up, son," said the cape buffalo quietly. "She'll be furious if you let your fur stay disheveled like that." Nick didn't try to argue. Bogo was right, of course, so Nick stood up and walked to the bathroom where he could break down in privacy.

It took him ten minutes to calm enough to attempt to clean his paws, and another ten of scrubbing with the rubbish public bathroom hand soap to get the blood out of his fur. By the time he had made his paws look presentable once more, the hitch in his breathing was gone, the face was dry, and the poker face was in place once more. Nobody mentioned how bloodshot his own eyes were now, or how long he had taken. They understood.

Three hours passed before a doctor came into the waiting room. A honey badger whose name tag read Dr. Pierce. To his credit, the crowd of mega fauna did not visibly give him pause. He spoke to the room but looked directly at Nick.

"The bullet lodged against her shoulder blade," explained Doctor Pierce quietly. "There was a lot of tissue damage, but she was lucky she was wearing the armored vest. Without it the shot would have killed her outright. We've done everything we can to repair the damage; now it's her turn. We should know if she'll make it in a few more hours. You're all welcome to stay." Any possible response was drowned out by Clawhauser absolutely losing it. The cat had held it together until now, but understandably the good news had broken the illusion of calm. Nick and the others comforted him as they waited.

And they waited.

Despite never having met before, Lily and Nick spent the following hours talking as if they were old friends. It was the trauma of the thing, of course, but it was a comfort to them both nonetheless. And as they talked, Nick began to understand what had drawn Judy to her: Lily's chestnut fur was meticulously cared for, her voice was pleasant and musical, and her wit was nearly as sharp as Nick's.  
Everyone else had gone to the hospital's cafeteria to get something to eat by the time the doctor came back with a smile. He had one thing to say, and he spoke to Nick.

"She wants to see you," said the doctor. "Your name was the first thing she said when she woke." In Nick's haste to thank the doctor profusely and rush off to the bunny's room, he missed how Lily's face fell, showing a combination of relief and jealousy. By the time he turned back to make sure she was following, the jealousy was gone, hidden behind concern and relief.

Judy was awake, but she looked like hell. Her torso was wrapped in bandages and gauze and her eyes were droopy with drugs, but she had a smile as Nick and Lily entered the room and reached for a hand each. Soon enough this room, like the waiting room before, would be filled with people wishing her well, but now it was cozy. Nick's heart unclenched for the first time in hours.

Nick, afterward, wanted to call Judy's parents himself to inform them that she had indeed been injured but was going to recover. Chief Bogo, however, very quickly overruled him, citing his status as her commanding officer as reason why it should be him and not Nick. It made sense. And so Judy's folks had been informed; they made a special trip to Zootopia to visit Judy in the hospital, but Nick had been on duty when they were there so he was unable to meet them or tell them how sorry he was that she was injured instead of him.

Judy was in the hospital for two weeks. After she was released, Nick volunteered to be her nurse during her recovery, offering his pull-out couch. She'd likely sleep while he was at work, and when he got home he'd make sure she was cared for. The recovery would be long, but they would get through it. Judy was strong and Nick, after all, could be very much a proverbial mother hen when he wanted to be. He'd check her pulse while she slept. It was fast, and blessedly strong.


	3. Nurse

A hundred thousand years ago in the forests that once stood in the area, predators hunted prey, prey employed defense mechanisms to avoid death, and survival on both sides depended on stealth and skills. It was very much a wild, bloody, feral world. Kill or be killed. The rhythm of hunt and hunted was subtle and pervasive in that old world, and those who were very careful could sense it.

A fox, rust-colored fur rippling in the light breeze, stepped through the jungle at a quick pace; he was silent despite the speed, a skill honed over many years. His ears swiveled as he ran, picking up the sounds of insects and other animals around him. He was alone, but that could change at any moment; should change, in fact, since he was on the trail of a rabbit. He could smell her delicate musk, could hear the light, quick patter of her footsteps somewhere nearby. The dark of the moonless evening was broken up by the occasional street light, but the fox didn't need them: this was his jungle, an urban jungle, and he knew it well.

Nick Wilde adjusted his tie as he stopped at the corner to get his bearings, a rueful grin crossing his features as he thought about that oldest of rhythms, still present in the world today. Hunter and hunted. Predator…and prey. His prey tonight, fleeing him through the jungle that was Zootopia's city center, was his partner Judy Hopps. She was injured, was supposed to be taking time off to rest and heal up, but she had slipped out of the apartment when he was in the shower.

He couldn't blame her. She had been in the hospital for two weeks, and was on enforced bed rest and "taking it easy" for a full month after that. And she had been a very good patient so far, taking it easy as she had been told to with a minimum of complaints. She was supposed to be taking another two months to recover, but she was a bunny and bunnies have lots of energy. So she left.

Nick started moving again, having pinpointed Judy's location. His easy lope down the street brought him to an apartment building, upon the steps of which was a panting, shaking form. He leaned on the railing above her and stared down.

"A successful hunt," he joked with a smirk. Judy rolled her eyes.

"That's not funny, Nick," puffed Judy, still out of breath. "How did you find me?" Nick tapped his nose and winked, and Judy shook her head.

"You popped a stitch, Judes," said Nick seriously. "What are you doing out here? You know you need to rest." Judy scoffed so hard Nick briefly worried she'd explode.

"I've been 'resting'," cried Judy shrilly, "for a month and a half! I wanted to go running, dang it! I'm bored." Nick shook his head.

"I know, Carrots," said the fox, sliding down the rail to sit next to his friend, "but you got shot. Remember? You almost died?"

"I did die," corrected the bunny. She sighed; it was hard to remember any of the events surrounding the actual gunshot. She knew she was on a strike team going into a hot zone, but the details were gone. Traumatic retrograde amnesia, they called it. She would never recover those memories. And she was right: She did die, on the table in surgery. For three minutes and twenty-seven seconds, she was clinically dead. Doctor Pierce, though, was very good at what he did.

It was a sobering reminder.

"Let's not have a repeat, yeah?" Nick nudged her shoulder with his elbow. Judy nodded.

"I think you might need to carry me," murmured Judy sheepishly. Nick chuckled and scooped her up without a word and carried her back to his apartment. From there, they made their way to the hospital to take care of the popped stitch. For Nick had been right: the blood he smelled on her was thanks to that.  
The next morning, he left her at his apartment to recover while he went to work. His first action upon walking in Precinct One was to go straight to Clawhauser and slap a hundred bucks on the cheetah's desk.

"Twenty-seven days," said Nick. "She ran last night. Technically less than a month, so you win." The doughy cat collected the cash with a grin and thanks, but his grin quickly fell.

"Is she okay?" asked Clawhauser. Nick filled him in on the aftermath, and made sure he'd spread the update to the rest of the precinct. Then, Nick went to collect his assignment for the day. He'd been working alone since Judy went on medical leave, but the assignments he'd received were pretty easy. Nick had been working on domestic calls, responding to reports of intruders and runaway children and the like. Nothing tremendously dangerous was going on for him, especially given his status as a relatively new police officer.

Over the course of the next several hours, Nick busied himself by responding to calls. When he wasn't on a call diffusing situations, helping catch pets, and collecting information for missing persons paperwork, he was working on a backlog of reports. He was notorious for leaving his reports undone, but he didn't eschew it altogether. No, he let it build up to a critical mass, and then he'd spend a few days straight filling it all out; he was a professional procrastinator, and had become exceedingly good at the last-minute-shuffle.  
The benefit of doing mostly paperwork every day—or perhaps it should be said the downfall thereof—is that it's mindless. It leaves you plenty of time to think about other things, more painful things. Things like the worry you have over your small, delicate partner, who was currently waiting in your apartment with a healing hole in her torso. These days, Nick Wilde was stressed all the time. Of course, he had always dealt with a lot of stress. The difference was, he was now stressing over the health of a person instead of where his next buck was going to come from. It was a strange combination of familiar and bizarre.

He clocked out for the day in a shower of well-wishes to deliver, and he walked home with the burden of those messages weighing him down. To distract himself, he played a mental game he liked to call Pick the Place. He had lived in Zootopia for many years, so he knew many landmarks. He'd pick out a landmark while sauntering down the road—the pie shop, the ice cream parlor, the entrance to Little Rodentia—and think about all the things it had been to him in days past. Like that underpass, oh the times he'd slept there. The times he'd fled from there, running from someone he'd conned and made angry. Or like that apartment building, where he had lived for a month before being kicked out for running a weekly poker game and not inviting the landlord. That house where he'd lived for a week, invited by the woman he was engaged to at the time, but she got sick and left it to him in her will; he had sold the house for a pittance, the pain of loss too great to handle keeping it.

The game did distract him, but he wasn't sauntering like he had done before; instead, he was trotting along at a brisk pace, wanting to get back as quickly as he could. When he arrived within line of sight of his apartment building, though, he slowed down: he didn't want to arrive in his apartment huffing and puffing like he had hurried. He had a reputation to uphold, after all. So by the time he arrived at his door, he was no longer winded. Nick unlocked the door and opened it to reveal the hall; directly to the right was his living room, and it was to that room he made a beeline.

Judy was on the ratty pullout couch, but the empty plate on the side table proved she had been up and about while he was at work. She had clearly eaten, which was good, but she was now completely asleep. Nick took just a moment to check her temperature and pulse before going to his room to change from his uniform to some khakis and his favorite green Hawaiian shirt. When he was done, he went back to the living room, grabbed his television remote, and sat on the floor with the arm of the couch at his back. It was a dark green corduroy couch; he'd gotten it off the street a few years ago and Nick spent three days deep-cleaning it. It was still covered in holes along the seams, the padding thin and compacted, but it was kept immaculately clean otherwise. There was plenty of room on the thin, built in and pulled out bed, but he wouldn't take it. Hadn't, in fact, all month.

It was half an hour later, half way through a cop show, when Judy stirred. She turned over to face him, groaned in pain, and sat up.

"You're on the floor again," said Judy disapprovingly. Nick looked up to her and smirked.

"I like the floor," retorted Nick. "It's comfy. How's your chest?" When she replied that it was sore, Nick immediately got up to get her a bottle of water and some painkillers, which she accepted with thanks while he took the opportunity to stretch. The frame of his couch had begun to dig into his back.

"You could lay up here with me, you know," suggested Judy before popping the pill and quaffing half the bottle in one go.

"You're a girl," replied Nick simply. Then he added: "And you have a girlfriend. It wouldn't be right." Judy scoffed, but dropped the issue.

"Actually," said Judy a moment later, "Lily has been acting a bit distant lately. She says she's just worried about me, but…." She trailed off and Nick replied with a nod.  
They sat in silence for a long while, watching cheap cable. Judy napped more than she watched, truth be told, but Nick was comfortable in the silence. The soft, even sound of Judy's breathing was a balm to his worry.

It was nice, actually, to have her here, he mused. Nick had spent most of his life alone, and if asked back then he would have insisted that he enjoyed the solitude. It wouldn't have been a lie…and yet. He'd had Judy here most days for nearly a month now, and he had to admit to himself that her presence eased a deep-seated loneliness that he hadn't realized was there. It would come to an end in time, and probably sooner than he'd like, but for now he would enjoy it as he could. He looked over at her, slumped over at an odd angle on his old second-hand stained sofa, her lips parted in sleep, and smiled. If anyone else had been there, his green eyes would seem to have sparkled, and the smile, far from the sarcastic smirk he usually held, would have seemed endearing.

In the morning he'd be leaving her with her girlfriend for a couple days. After that he'd stalk his urban jungle and worry, but for now he laid the bunny down in a more healthy position and he knew peace. That feral world he had thought about before was an eon away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is coming along swimmingly. I plan to start a new fic or two at some point, but we'll get there. 
> 
> I love feedback! And I hope everyone enjoys reading!


	4. Trials

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter will seem a little out of context given what's happened so far, but don't worry. It ties back into the main narrative later on. Enjoy! 
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos, guys! Don't hesitate to leave comments if you like!

The streets were once a home for Nick Wilde. He survived on them, lived on them, loved on them, and even profited on them. He'd called the streets home in fact for longer than he'd lived in any kind of building. Nick was back on the streets today, after almost a year. This time, though, it was not forced on him; the apartment he'd been able to get with Judy's help and could now afford with his ZPD pay check was still there waiting for him.

However, his green couch was empty. He'd dropped Judy Hopps off at her girlfriend's place a few hours ago, and his silent apartment was oppressive after a month of having a guest. The streets weren't much better with the memories of pain and survival, but at least his silent walls weren't screaming paranoia at him. No, his old stomping grounds distracted him from his worry and he didn't mind exploring places he had once slept and worked his days away.

Nick was strolling along a smaller side street with an ice cream in hand when someone peeled out of the crowd around him and strolled toward the fox. It was a raccoon and familiar to Nick. The Raccoon came alongside him and matched his pace, walking with him as if they were scheduled to meet up. Nick didn't say anything, was unsure what he wanted and so he let the Raccoon decide whether to launch a dialogue. It took only a minute.

"Haven't seen you in over a year, Wilde," said the raccoon casually. Nick hummed a response as he took a bite of his ice cream cone.

"Been busy, Rynge," drawled Nick. "How've you been?" Jeff Rynge the raccoon snorted.

"Busy, Wilde?" He snorted again. "I heard you're a copper now. A boy in blue. I defended you, old friend. Told everyone that you'd never betray us like that. Did I lie, Nick?" Nick glanced over at the raccoon with an eyebrow raised.

"Well," drawled the fox, "I've not betrayed anyone. I did become a police officer with Precinct One, though, and I think you know that."

Jeff hummed in response, then pointed to the right across Nick, indicating an alleyway. Nick turned to enter the alley with Jeff without hesitation, still casually eating his ice cream. Alas, the cold snack was almost gone. The alley was in the shadow of several large buildings, and it turned to the left ahead, continuing in the middle of the block. There was trash and detritus littering the ground here, a smell of sick and rot invading his nostrils. He could hear cockroaches and other vermin chittering along out of sight as they rounded the corner. The pavement here was cracked from lack of maintenance and there were stains here and there that were not from trash or drunkards. Nick knew this place. He'd never actually been in this alley before, but he'd seen people enter. Most never left.

The space here, a dozen meters down from the corner, was the alleyway equivalent of a cul-de-sac, an open space approximately sixteen meters across with the back doors of several businesses accessible. As Jeff and Nick entered the space, three other mammals came in from one of the buildings: an arctic wolf, an otter, and a leopard. Collectively, Nick knew them as the Enforcement Squad. As the two groups stopped, facing each other with about six feet between them, Nick cringed internally. He had a great poker face and he used it as he examined those around him.

"Morning, Nick," said the wolf. His fur was grey, his coat had a lump under the left side, and the rust-brown stain he stood on was punctuated with weeds growing in the cracks in the concrete. As he spoke, a roach an inch across crawled around his feet.  
"Bradley," nodded Nick. He put his hands in his pocket; it looked like a relaxed, careless action but they didn't know—couldn't know—that Nick had brass knuckles in his pocket.

"Long time," said the otter. She also had a lump under her coat, the same style and steel-grey color clothing as her companions. She stood an arm's length from Bradley on an odd patch of grass growing where a sizeable piece of pavement had been removed or crushed to rubble.

"More than a year, Helen," replied Nick. He slipped his fingers into the brass knuckles in his pocket and looked at the leopard. "You have contacts, Gregory? Last I saw you, you were wearing glasses."  
Gregory, the leopard, was the only one here who didn't clearly have a hidden weapon, but he didn't need them: he was notorious as being a surgeon with his claws. He was also known for being an animal of few words, and his grunt of acknowledgement furthered that reputation.

"So," said Nick, "what's going on guys? Throwing a party? Need some ice cream?" He licked his chops, the taste of the ice cream he had finished still on his lips.

"You're going to work for us again," said Jeff with a tone of finality. Nick smirked, tossing his half-lidded gaze at him.  
"Got a job," said Nick, "but thanks for the offer." The Enforcement Squad separated. Their movements were designed to look casual, but Nick knew casual very well. He saw them position themselves very carefully in a triangle around Nick, and Jeff positioned himself to be out of any line of fire, still facing Nick.

"Wasn't an offer, Nick," said Bradley, ahead of Nick and to his right. "We need someone in the ZPD." Nick's sneer fell from his face and he adjusted his footing, the pads on his bare toes gripping the rough, warm concrete beneath him.  
"You're asking me to break the law, Bradley," muttered Nick, "not to mention betray my friends at the precinct." Bradley's hands clasped in front of him.

"You've broken the law before," said the otter behind him and to the left. Nick shook his head and looked over his shoulder. He had been very careful to obey the letter of the law his whole life. This had actually been a point of contention between them before when Nick had worked for their boss on a con.

It was not terribly long before he met Judy for the first time, actually, that he'd worked with these guys. Only three months prior to the two days that changed his life. He had come up with a great con involving a detour around a busy area of town, taxi cabs, and a couple strategically placed food carts. If it worked, it would net Nick a tidy profit. There were, however, two rather large problems: he did not have any taxi cabs…and the best area for the detour to go was right through a certain crime boss's territory. It would not do to step on any proverbial toes, and so Nick approached the boss with his idea. She was a buffalo of some notoriety and went by the name Pricilla.

She agreed to his terms of a 60/40 split and borrow of some of her cars, but insisted he work closely with her personal group of mammals specializing in making sure everything went according to plan: the Enforcement Squad. From minute one, they had clashed in ideals. The moment they walked out of Pricilla's office, the three of them tried to "simplify" his hustle by cutting legal corners, which Nick had flat refused. He hadn't spent two weeks very carefully researching traffic laws and toll ordnances and gathering permits for his good health, after all.

In the end, though, the hustle had gone off without a hitch—and legally, no less, much to the consternation of Bradley and his associates. And when they had parted a mere couple weeks prior to meeting a life-altering little bunny, Nick had said some sarcastic remarks—as is his wont—that disparaged his partners. Now, thirteen months later, Nick was facing them down again, and there was no question of the illegality of what they wanted him to do.

Nick turned a half-circle, looking at the mammals behind him. This can't turn violent, he thought to himself. He would not survive if it did. The atmosphere was tense, at the very breaking edge, so Nick did the only thing he could do.

"Alright," he said. "If you insist." The tension in the air between them diffused immediately and the enforcement squad began to move back to a group and walked to the building from which they came without another word.

"I'll see you in a week, kid," said Jeff the raccoon as he walked back down the alley toward the main road. "I expect some very interesting inside information." Nick watched him saunter away and didn't let go of the brass knuckles until he was out of sight. Only when alone did he drop the weapon back to the bottom of his pocket and start walking back out of the alley. Jeff was gone, the enforcement squad was gone, and the streets…well, the streets were darker today than they had been in a long time.


	5. Tribulations

Judith Laverne Hopps was a rabbit, and she fell in love. As a rabbit, she was just one of hundreds of children sired or cared for by Bonnie and Stu Hopps, her parents. She was not lost in the crowd, however; first of all, bunnies were very good at remembering who was who, especially with their family; and second, Judy was the most unique of them, thank you very much. From the time she was nine years old, she wanted to be the first bunny cop in the world. This dream did not earn her points in popularity, but she persisted nonetheless.

And then came the day she able to actually apply to the police academy. It was an ordeal and a half to make her way through the training, but she was a bunny and as a bunny she would not be resisted. Top of her class, Judy was offered a position at Zootopia Police Department Precinct One, city center. Her first few days were…not heroic, but she was persistent and got a case.

It proved to be her big break, even if she did make a number of mistakes, but Judy never liked remembering the Nighthowler Crisis nonetheless. Only two things of any good, she would say, came of it in her personal life: it proved her as a worthy officer, and she met the no-good dirty scoundrel who would become her very best friend in the world, Nick Wilde. 

When it was all over, Nick went away to the police academy and he and Judy kept in touch and saw each other on the weekends. She helped tutor him after the first month, and after the third she began to get very interested in him, in more than a friendly way. Her hints and subtle advances were ignored and for months she fought with the perceived rejection. Very good at keeping her emotions to herself, she didn’t let it affect her work or her friendship, and it was put out of mind.

And then she met Lily Ryan. She was younger than Judy by three years, but that hadn’t mattered when she walked into Stagbucks for a coffee, and the meeting had gone exceptionally well.

She fell in love when the chestnut bunny brought her the coffee she had ordered instead of making her come get it; the excuse was that she was getting off work anyway, but they both knew it was a flirt. Instead of leaving the coffee shop at which she worked, Lily sat and talked to Judy for four hours. It was Judy’s day off (and thus Nick’s), so she had nowhere important to be, had bought the coffee as an afterthought on her way from the store. 

They talked about Judy’s involvement in the Nighthowler case. How Judy resigned from the force and why, and for the first time since it happened Judy didn’t want to cry when it came up. A year had passed, sure, but it helped that Lily was so supportive. Her gold eyes were deep and liquid and focused on Judy’s own violet ones, the depth of her attention a balm to Judy’s nerves. 

They talked about family. How Judy was one of two hundred plus siblings, and Lily was the only child her parents could bear, the only survivor of a miracle litter that fell to pox. How similar their mothers were in their protectiveness and supportiveness. How different Lily’s alcoholic father was from Judy’s overprotective but lovable one. 

They talked about work. How Judy and Nick risked their lives every day and Lily risked her sanity dealing with abusive customers and stupid coworkers. How prejudiced Judy’s boss had seemed, until Judy understood Bogo’s motivations, and how nice Lily’s boss seemed until Lily had understood just how much of a prejudiced arse he really was.

They talked about relationships. How Judy hadn’t had many because she was so focused on her future career that it was off-putting. How Lily had had many partners, mostly girls, as a way to make up for her depressing lack of a large family which was considered so normal in bunny communities. How Judy had never considered dating girls before, and maybe if Lily was interested Judy would like to test the waters.

Then they went on their first date, and Nick dropped off the face of the planet for four days. The date was spectacular: they had gone to this silly class and learned how to make jam from fruit and were the only bunnies present; they went to a quiet dinner at a popular high-end restaurant and enjoyed complaining about the food (despite the fact that it was actually quite good); they had gone for a walk through Tundratown, and raced each other back to city center (Judy won, but only by a small margin).

The aftermath of the date involved a very sweet, very intimate yet very chaste kiss, and then a check on her partner. The check did not go well, and Judy was at a loss as to what was wrong with him. The assumption was that he had the flu or he had gotten some bad news he wasn’t sure how to cope with. So she puzzled it out that evening, went by in the morning, then realized that afternoon what had happened. In hindsight his crush on her (or was it more?) was obvious: he had bought her coffee; he had asked her to dinner, which wasn’t altogether unusual but it was the tone of the asking that was telling; he had become nervous when their shift ended; and finally, and most importantly, when she told him she was going on a date his whole being had crumpled in on itself. He utterly deflated. She was so consumed in the moment by her excitement that it didn’t register in her mind, but hindsight was twenty-twenty.

The following several days were spent working and trying to talk to Nick. After their short but emotional discussion in the cafe in which Nick made it clear that she had hurt him deeply but forgave her for it—indeed, didn’t even blame her like she did—she had a very long shift at the precinct that showed her distracted and upset. That evening, she went to see Lily.

Judy fell in love with Lily when Lily had held her when she cried over hurting Nick. Lily understood friendship and sympathized with Judy’s upset, and so she comforted her girlfriend. The comforting worked well enough to turn the mood from one of regret and hurt to one of tenderness and romance. 

The next month showed a certain closeness develop between Judy and Lily that, it seemed, nothing could change. There were moments when Lily was distant, of course, but Judy chalked it up to barista stress. What she couldn’t know and should have known was that there was a definite edge of more-than-friends to Judy’s banter with Nick that Lily picked up on just from Judy’s stories about the days’ events. She would have denied it, didn’t believe it, was so certain she was over Nick. But Lily, the exemplary listener that she was, did not level the accusation at Judy. 

And then Judy got shot on the job.

Judy would never remember the shooting itself, only had blurry memories of entering the building in which it happened, but she was told the slug had ripped through her body armor and lodged in her shoulder; she was told the vest saved her life, unquestionably. The thing is, after donning her gear to join the strike team, her next clear memory was waking in pain and cold. Her partner was no longer on the radio and so she called for him, needed to make sure he was safe. Minutes later when Nick (safe!) entered the room with Lily in tow, she definitely picked up on the edge to Lily’s face and voice.

Judy fell in love with Lily when Lily was supportive of her new living situation; she had effectively moved into Nick’s apartment, which was at first like a fun sleepover but quickly became a chore for them both thanks to the care Judy needed and didn’t want. But Nick was very much the model nurse, and Lily, though increasingly distant, was checking in through visits and calls regularly. For nearly another full month this went on until finally Judy was in good enough shape to get up and about (and escape from the apartment…it didn’t go well…), at which time she arranged to spend a whole weekend with Lily.

The curvaceous bunny was at the apartment first thing in the morning with her car and helped Nick and Judy get the necessary things downstairs, and then they were off, Nick walking one way down the road and the girls driving the other. Judy had never been to Lily’s place, and was pleasantly surprised to see it was an actual house. The place had been built for a larger mammal—Lily said she bought it through an intermediary from the previous owner’s mate when the vixen had succumbed to some terminal disease—but Lily had learned a thing or two about home improvement from her father and so she was able to make things work with a little elbow grease and bunny ingenuity. It was a small place, even considering the previous occupant, with only four rooms (kitchen, bathroom, single-occupant bedroom, and small living room). When Judy entered the living room, Lily gave a wry grin and opened her arms wide.

“Welcome to Casa Lily,” said Lily. “Have a seat anywhere, I’ll get your things.” The living room in which Judy settled was beautiful in her opinion. The wallpaper featured a subtle dahlia design in cream on white, the couch was an overstuffed cotton affair of pale yellow, end tables and entertainment center of pastel orange, and a coffee table of tempered glass. The floor was hardwood, polished to a shine and swept clean, and Judy resolved to slide across it in her bare fluffy feet the moment her recovering wound would let her. For now, though, she sank into the soft couch that smelled like the lavender in the vases on the end tables and let Lily be helpful.

When finally Lily got the stuff inside and finished puttering around in the kitchen, she sat next to Judy on the couch and handed her a plate of blueberry bagels with strawberry jam and told her to eat, that she needed her strength. Judy almost rolled her eyes; it sounded so familiar. She swore she had gained a full ten ounces in the last month (she hadn’t) and that was a lot for a bunny! But she enjoyed the toasted bagels nonetheless and carried on small talk with Lily for the remainder of the morning, discussing cases Nick had told her about, Judy’s progress with recovery, and Lily’s trouble with a customer at work.

Eventually, the morning ended and Lily insisted Judy go take a nap with her. Judy stood when Lily did to follow her to the bedroom, and made an innocent comment.

“I missed you while I was with Nick,” said Judy. Just that, and nothing more, a careless smile on her face. As she said it, Judy put her arm around Lily’s waist…and that’s when everything changed. Lily stopped in her tracks, sighed, and sidestepped Judy’s arm to lean on the wall in the living room. Her golden eyes met Judy and pierced her soul with a mournful gaze.

“When you were with Nick,” repeated Lily, flatly. Judy frowned and tilted her head, but before she could reply, Lily continued. “I can’t compete with him, can I? And I’m tired of trying.” 

“Compete?” asked Judy, bemused. “Why would you need to compete? I’m with you.” Lily shook her head.

“Do you have any idea how often you talk about Nick?” Lily held up two fingers. “That was twice now. In two hours. Tuesday when I took you to breakfast? Out of forty-five minutes and four topics of conversation half an hour and two topics involved Nick directly.” She could have gone on, but Judy’s frown became an open mouth and her arms crossed.

“Nick is my friend, Lily,” demanded Judy. “Not to mention my partner at the precinct. That’s all he is.” Lily shook her head again.

“Except it’s not,” shot Lily, her voice raising. “When he’s around it’s like gravity changes. Suddenly he’s holding you here instead of the planet. He moves, and you move. When he shows up, you light up like a star, and when he leaves you mope like a lost child. Are you really telling me that you don’t know?” There was a short silence that seemed to last for days as Judy processed and compared.

“…don’t know what?” It was all Judy could say as her chest clenched and her nose twitched.

“You love him!” Lily’s yell was louder than Judy thought her voice could get, short as she was even for a bunny, and in the piercing silence following, Judy swallowed hard. She wanted to deny it. She wanted to belie her girlfriend’s words, prove somehow that she was free from that previous heartbreak. 

But the truth was, Judy couldn’t. She’d lied to herself for months, had lied by extension to Lily, and now that she was finally being forced to confront the truth it was impossible to deny. Her feelings were clear…but she refused to articulate them. Refused even to think the words, because the reality of having become that person was too much to bear.

So she said the next best thing, in the quietest, meekest voice she had ever used, the tears plain in the sound.

“But I love you, too.” 

“I know, Judy,” muttered Lily, and her voice broke; she was at the end of her strength. Lily took the step to cross the white oak floor polished to a shine and embraced Judy tightly. Then, she stood on her toes and their mouths met in a long, quiet kiss that reeked of finality. Afterward, Lily stepped back again.

“But it isn’t enough.” She turned and walked down the hall and into her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her so that Judy wouldn’t hear the tears.

Judy stood stock-still while her world collapsed around her. There was a pressure like a huge, wet fire in the very middle of her chest not unlike a fresh bullet wound, and she understood for the second time in her life why they called it a broken heart. The room spun around her, and she was only peripherally conscious of going outside and sprinting from the pretty white house with its baby-blue door. She was conscious only of that bone-deep need to flee the source of pain, to find a place of safety. A place that was slightly too big for a mammal of her size. A place that smelled like male and blueberries and musk. 

A place of swishing, bushy tail and coarse orange fur and teeth that could rip her to shreds but never would. 

She ran despite the stabbing pain in her shoulder because the words that were fired at her like a sniper’s bullet had found their mark. She ran despite the shortness of breath because the lies she had carefully convinced herself were true had become tragically false. She ran despite the trickle of crimson that stained her favorite pink flannel because there was nothing else she could do, because she loved Nicholas Wilde and that had changed everything.

Judith Laverne Hopps was a rabbit, and she fell in love. But sometimes, love simply is not enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of an emotional chapter this time 'round! What will happen now? Stay tuned for more! I hope you are all enjoying it so far. Please don't hesitate to leave kudos and comments! Any feedback helps.


	6. Dawn

Judy’s father had always told her tears are cathartic.  It was years before she understood what he meant:  that the act of crying, of letting it all out, whatever “it” may be, was in itself a healing experience.  Her father had always been that kind of bunny, the one to lend a comforting shoulder and sage word (even if he did have an alarming habit of trying to make one settle instead of trying).  And for most of her life, Judy had believed him.  That belief never stopped her, of course, from crying only rarely.  She was far from stoic, was in fact very bunny-like in the way she wore her heart on her sleeve, but she so rarely actually cried that she simply accepted the adage as truth and moved on.

Crumpled in a heap in front of Nick Wilde’s apartment door, Judy couldn’t even put words to the sensation that was her new belief in the wrongness of that old adage; the pain was too great.  Her feet were scraped raw from running, calves sore from the exertion, shoulder aching from its new (probably minor) injury, and her eyes were burning and swollen, nose running, sinuses ready to explode from the tears. 

She would never know how long she laid there.  How many times her phone rang, she lost count.  How long she slept fitfully, Judy would never guess.  Couldn’t have noticed the shadows outside lengthen and the streetlights come on from her vantage point curled up at Nick’s door.  But eventually—

_blueberries and musk_

—her semi-conscious reverie was broken.  There was a sound like speech that would not process through the fog of emotion and Judy was lifted clear off the floor like a kitten.  The last thing she heard before succumbing again to the darkness was a door slamming shut.

Judy woke in warmth, but her chest was bare.  Something was pulling on the patch on her shoulder where her fur had been shaved to make way for stitches and bandages, and it pulled her out of sleep and gently into consciousness.  The air smelled of cinnamon rolls and alcohol and ointment and she twitched her nose and turned her head searching for the better of the three.

“Stop wiggling, Carrots,” said a warm, delightfully-male voice above her, and she opened her eyes to see Nick.  He looked tired, and his fur had that knotted matted look that meant he had neither showered nor brushed in at least twelve hours.  His favorite green shirt was on, but unbuttoned revealing a slim chest and a delicate gold crucifix dangling from his neck, and he wore a pair of shorts.

“You took off my shirt,” said Judy; she should have sounded angry or scolding, intended to in fact, but sleep smeared her voice.  Nick shook his head, set aside a soiled bandage, and began cutting a new one to size.

“Had to,” said Nick, focusing on the task at hand.  “You know you still have stitches because you keep popping them, right?  If you had just listened to the doctors these would have been taken out a week or two ago, but no.  Every couple days, you have to do something to rip them open somehow.” He laid the new bandage on her shoulder and looked away to find the medical tape.  Judy absorbed the venom in his words and frowned, looking up at him. 

“You’re angry.”

“You think?”  Nick rolled his eyes as he unrolled the tape and tore off a strip.  “You know how much work Doc Pierce had to do to keep you alive?  How difficult it was for the guys to keep positive while you were on the table?  How difficult it was for _me_?”  He opened his mouth to continue but didn’t, shook his head wearily, and sighed.  As he carefully taped up the bandage and gathered the refuse, it became clear he had not looked anywhere but her wound the whole time she had been awake, despite the show that was available to see.

“I’m sorry.”  Judy lifted her shirt from the bed beside her and started to gingerly put it on while Nick stepped across his bedroom to the trash bin in the corner, where he deposited the old bandage and other garbage.  “I have trouble sitting still, that’s all.  I’m not taking light.”

Nick crossed the room again to sit next to her on his twin bed, the crucifix catching the light from the lamp on the bedside table.  The chain was very thin, but the weave complicated and pretty, and the cross itself looked heavy despite its tiny size and simple design of straight lines.

“Pretty,” said Judy, reaching for it.  Nick looked down, then leaned away from her hand and buttoned up his shirt, concealing it from view.

“From my mom.”  His words were spoken softly as he reached out to straighten her shirt…a different one than she had arrived in.

The memory hit her like a brick to the head and her breath caught in her chest.

“Oh…no,” said Nick hastily, “nothing like that.  I call her every day, I just….”  He trailed off when Judy shook her head and swallowed hard.

“My…” the word broke as it left her mouth, so Judy swallowed a second time and tried again, more successfully.  “My shirt.  My pink shirt, that’s my favorite shirt, I bled on it, my sister made me that shirt.  Now it has blood on it.”

“Peroxide.”  Nick walked to his dresser and picked up a very not-stained favorite pink flannel and showed her.  “Hydrogen Peroxide dissolves blood.”  Her thanks was throwing her arms around him the moment he sat back down, even though her shoulder was still sore.  He patted her on the head and sighed.  “What am I going to do with you?”

“Love me,” was Judy’s answer, out before she could catch it and turn it into something else.  Even to her, she sounded forlorn.

“What happened?”  Nick drew back from her and looked down at Judy, but she didn’t look back up to see his expression. 

“It…I was…”  The words didn’t want to come to her, so she stuttered and babbled.  “We were fine, and it was just not going to work because I’m such a dumb bunny and I _lied_ and you’re so…what do I do, Nick?”

His response was to put his warm arm around her and draw her into him where she could smell old sweat and fox musk. Judy felt the tension flow out of her and she melted into him despite the funk.  It gave her new strength, and she spoke.  Not fluidly, not without stopping periodically to swallow back the tears that threatened to return, but she spoke.

“Lily was so great, and gracious, and sweet,” said Judy.  “And I love her.  But a long time ago I lied to myself.  And then I lied to you, and then I lied to Lily.  It came out in my speech:  I kept talking about my partner.  All the time, whenever Lily and I were together.  I didn’t even notice, but she did.  And Lily…she got…tired of it.  So she....” She trailed off, and Nick squeezed her harder.

“I’m sorry.”  He put his chin on her head and sighed again.  “When she came by this morning, I didn’t know.  She was concerned, said you ran off yesterday and stopped answering your phone.  I had been taking care of you since I came back last night, and I told her you were fine, that you were sleeping.  I guess she just needed to know you were safe.”

The new knowledge put a pressure in her chest, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with it.  Should she be happy that Lily did care?  Should she be angry that she dared show her face?  Or should she be sad again that it was over, that she had been abandoned for her own stupid mistakes?  In the end, Judy didn’t really get a chance to decide because she was pulled under again.  Later, she would realize how much energy healing and depression saps from you, how both can make you so deeply tired, but for now she would sleep in her fox’s embrace.

It was light again—barely—when Judy woke next.  Pre-dawn shined in through the open blinds in Nick’s window and she crawled out from where she had been nestled in his sleeping arms to make a much needed trip to the toilet.

Once finished there, she wandered the apartment in a daze, sleep slowing her mind and body both.  She first went into the kitchen to find something to eat, but Nick kept his shelves stocked with junk food and not the kind Judy liked, so she got some water from the tap and sipped on it as she padded around into the living room again.  That old immaculate green couch was a couch again, the pull-out bed folded up under the cushions, and the coffee table had been moved back into place.  Upon it was the usual knick-knacks—coasters, magazines of various innocent kinds, Nick’s badge—but it also held the new issue of Playbunny and a set of brass knuckles.  Odd combination, but Nick was male after all, and a fox to boot.

Judy eventually ended up back in the bedroom, where she stood observing.  This was, truth be told, the first time she had actually set foot in here.  Nick would surely have let her before, but she didn’t ask and he didn’t offer.  It was a small room, but it suited him.  The walls were a green color, darker than Judy would have chosen, his twin bed with forest green sheets and moss-patterned comforter accenting it nicely.  The nightstand held an alarm clock and lamp, which had been turned off at some point, and the remainder of the open space in the bedroom was taken up by the dresser at the foot of the bed and the thick carpet matching Nick’s bedspread, which was reflected in the full-length mirror on the closet door opposite the flank of the bed and next to the door to the hall.

Nick, who had expanded from his spooning curl to a sprawl, was not quite snoring in a pool of light coming from the window.  He had changed from his old green shirt to a grey tee and was wearing black sweats.  The orange fur had been washed and brushed sometime after Judy had fallen asleep, and Judy smiled seeing him shift in his sleep.

She sipped her water and remembered her father’s old saying.  So many tears had been shed yesterday, and she had cried some more while sleeping—her puffy eyes and matted fur proved that.  And the aftermath of those tears was, yes, a sore body and exhausted mind, but it was a much more healthy body and mind for it.  She would still need time to sort through her feelings and recover from this new blow, but perhaps dad was right, and crying was cathartic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little angst, a little fluff. We're starting to really get into it now. I hope everyone is enjoying so far! Leave me a comment!
> 
> Please excuse any medical mistakes I've made in this fic. I am not a medical professional.


	7. Recovery

Judy hated romance films.  They were just so sappy and unrealistic, especially the romantic comedies, and she did everything she could to avoid them.  Her love life had never followed the tropes of romance films or novels, after all, and nor did anyone else’s that she knew about.  So she didn’t watch them, especially in the aftermath of her breakup with Lily Ryan.

That was why she was curled up on Nick’s couch watching horror movies instead.  She had always loved horror movies, went out of her way as a kitten to watch as many of them as she could as often as possible, a habit her parents tried and failed many times to break her of.  The thing was, they didn’t scare her.  And when they did, the adrenaline rush it gave her was intoxicating.

Nick, it seemed, tended to err on the side of her parents on that score, though, and he had to be convinced to watch the classic _Alien_.  Currently, it was very nearly over and—though the film started with Judy cuddled into Nick’s side—it was Nick who now had his face tucked into her shoulder. 

“Nick, watch!  This is the best part, you’re missing it!”  Judy’s excited pleas only made Nick groan.  She laughed at him but let him be scared as she watched the climax of the film.  It was only when the credits music began that he came out from the relative safety of Judy’s shoulder.

“Wow, you really don’t like horror, do you?”  Judy giggled good-naturedly and thumped him on the arm.  Nick shook his head, clearly relieved the ordeal was over.

“I told you, Fluff, they don’t sit well with me.”  He cleared his throat and adjusted his position to face her.  “Now that the torture has completed for the evening, it’s time to check your wound; shirt off.”

“You know, if you wanted to see me topless you could have said so.”  Judy grinned in what she hoped would be a predatory way, but she skinned out of the grey tee all the same, revealing the scar.  It was clean, unsoiled, and she knew it would be; the stitches had come out a week ago, and the bandage the day after, after it was clear the wound had indeed sealed properly since the last time she tore it open.  Nonetheless, nurse Nick was keeping an eye on it.  His hot fingers prodded the area around it, parting fur gently.  Judy kept her eyes locked on his face, which was stoic; what he was thinking right now with that small, studious frown, Judy would never be able to guess, and that was okay.  She did notice the inside of his ears redden as he blushed, though, and the adorableness of it made her grin widely again.

“You’re blushing, Mr. Wilde,” teased Judy.  Nick ignored her and drew back.

“It looks good.”  He shifted in his seat again to face forward and leaned back into a comfortable recline.  “I don’t see any sign of bleeding, and the scar is pretty faint, all things considered.  Does it hurt at all, still?”

“Nope.”  Judy shook her head, and it wasn’t a lie.  “Tender, maybe, but no pain.  I’m going running in the morning before I go get my apartment back, want to come with?

Nick didn’t reply for a long moment, his frown deepening and he stared hard at the television.  Finally he shook his head as if to rouse himself, and then stood.

“You’re just trying to make me exercise, I’m onto you.”  The snark in his tone almost sounded forced, but he let the frown fall away.  “Want a beer?”  She shook her head and watched him go out of the living room toward his kitchen. 

Truth be told, she didn’t watch Nick leave so much as leer at his backside…but that was a technicality.  And even if she was leering, so what?  She was a bunny in her mid-twenties, so it was to be expected that her libido would act up sometimes.  It had nothing to do with the fact that she was in lo—that she liked Nick.

She got up to remove the _Alien_ DVD as she heard Nick open the fridge, and then he swore.  It was only a moment later that he came back into the room and grabbed his keys from the table.

“No more beer,” said Nick casually.  “Gonna go pick some up, I’ll be back in awhile.”  He began to head to the door.

“Hold on, I’ll go with you.”  Judy stood to go find her pants—she was wearing pajama bottoms at the moment—but Nick shook his head.

“No, you stay here.  I might go by Finnick’s place on the way back.”  And just like that, he was gone.

“That was odd,” declared Judy to the empty apartment.  And it was definitely not like Nick to just dismiss her like that, like an afterthought.  Especially considering Judy and Finnick got along.  They were certainly not bosom buddies, that was for sure, but their interactions were genial.  Maybe Finnick was having a tough time with something? 

She shook her head and put it out of mind.  While she waited for Nick to return, Judy busied herself on the gaming console hooked to the television.  It was a recent acquisition, one she was honestly against at first; after all, she had never taken the time to get into video games as a kid and as an adult she simply didn’t have time; but she had been on medical leave for two and a half months now and her increasing boredom and moping around from the breakup had been driving Nick absolutely nuts.  He insisted she get one to take her mind off everything else, even offered to split the cost, and so she’d gotten it.

She became hooked immediately.  So much so that just in the last three weeks her game collection had grown from two to twenty.  Currently she was blasting mutagenic aliens in a certain science fiction horror game with mining tools.  She liked it, though she wouldn’t have called it horror; it had jump scares and some suspense at best, but the story was good and the mechanics fluid so she was enjoying it.

After a bit, she paused it to go get a bottle of juice from the refrigerator.  While grabbing it, she noticed a single lone can of beer stuffed behind the milk, and she chuckled.  Nick really needed to learn how to look properly. 

While in the refrigerator, she decided she was hungry.  This prompted her to pull out ingredients and make a sandwich, and while making it she noticed it had been forty-five minutes since Nick had left.  Considering the closest shop open this late that sold his favorite brew was only five minutes away, he had been gone for a long time.  Must have gone to Finnick’s after all, though that was ten minutes in the opposite direction.

Judy spent the next ten minutes leisurely finishing her sandwich and juice, then went to get her phone to text Finnick, asking him when Nick was planning to return.  His reply came a short while later, a simple if clipped “haven’t seen him today,” and that news caused more than a little worry.  Her chest grew tight and she rationalized with herself.  _He found another friend on the way and they started talking,_ she thought.  _There was a line.  A really…really long line.  He’s fine._

It didn’t help for long.  Just as she grabbed her phone to try calling him, though, his door opened and he came in with a case of beer and a scowl.  He glanced over at her before heading to the refrigerator to put it away and was still looking annoyed when he came back a moment later with a can.

“You were gone awhile, what happened?”  Judy’s full attention was on him.

“Before or after some asshole stole my wallet?”  He sat next to her, leaving a clear six inches of space between them.  “Got to the store, some idiot nabbed my wallet right out of my hand, and I had to chase him down.”  His words came with no hesitation and lacked any heat.

“Took a walk to calm down, then?”  Judy scooted closer to him while he sipped his drink and she continued her game; she had paused in the middle of a mission and wanted to finish it before quitting, so Nick would just have to deal with the jump scares.

Turned out, though, that he wouldn’t.  By the time Judy finished the mission fifteen minutes later, Nick had passed out completely, beer still in hand and head slopped back against the back of the couch.  The sight was sweet and it brought a grin to her face.  She did enjoy seeing him sleep:  when he did his whole body relaxed.  There was no stress or worry on his face. 

Judy set aside the game controller and stood, taking the open beer from Nick.  It was still half-full, but it was a pale lager, and a terrible brand on top of it:  Judy preferred stouts, so she took it to the kitchen to pour it out.  The golden liquid flowing from the can made her think of the sunshine-colored living room in Lily’s house, and that made her think of Nick again.

The thing was, she had never lied about her feelings for Lily.  Bunnies moved fast in all things, and relationships were no different; the breakup hurt her a great deal, and most of the last month had been spent recovering from it.  She was over Lily now, but she still wouldn’t put words to her feelings for Nick. Perhaps she was just too stubborn, or perhaps she was trying to keep up appearances, so to speak, having so recently been dumped.

But no.  She had lied to herself before, and that couldn’t happen again.  Truth was, she was scared.  Scared that Nick didn’t like her anymore, scared that he never had and she misunderstood his meltdown before.  She was even scared of what it might mean if they started dating.  Judy had never really considered dating in her zeal to change the world, and her first serious foray into that world had been disastrous.  What if she tried again, but with Nick?  He was a predator; her species’ own personal perfect antagonist, in fact.  Would people accept it?  Would her parents?  And what about work, would they be reassigned?  Or even fired altogether.

Judy threw away the empty beer can and went back to the living room, sitting by Nick.  They had spoken about that day in the café only once after it happened, a week later.  He had been very clear about how he didn’t expect anything from her, and had even explained his admittedly rather severe reaction to her dating someone else.

 _“I’ve never really been close to anyone,”_ he had told her.  _“Not since I was very young.  I haven’t even dated at all, except for once or twice.  When I finally found someone I trusted and I cared about after so long….”_

He said it so softly:  _You make me vulnerable, Carrots._   And those words came back to her after months and months, echoing in her head.  Was it still true?  She had never doubted it until now, and suddenly she wasn’t sure.  Since then, he hadn’t flirted with her at all.  Hadn’t even looked at her in that way, as far as she had ever noticed.  Until a month ago, it was understandable, since she was dating someone.  He may have been a con artist once, but he was nothing if not honorable.

But she had been single for a month.  She hadn’t caught him staring or flirting even once.  Was it just a sense of honor?  Or was he over her?  Judy sighed, her ears drooping, and she shook her head.  Even when they shared a bed that one time, he never remembered it.  He told her he had fallen asleep while looking after her, and was quite frankly beside himself when Judy told him she woke up with him spooning her.  He even apologized for it, even though Judy had enjoyed it.

“Nick,” she said, nudging him; it was late, and thinking dark thoughts was getting her nowhere.  “Nick!” At her follow-up jab to the ribs he shot straight up, looking around wildly.

“Buwhaaa?? Huh? Whaddisit?” His wide-eyed gaze settled on Judy, who was chuckling.

“It’s late, dumb fox, and you fell asleep here.  You need to wake up so you can go to sleep.”  She stood and pulled him to his feet.

“Huh?  Yeah.  Bedtime.”  He let her lead him to the bedroom—or perhaps he was still mostly asleep—and fell on the bed still clothed.  Yep, he was still asleep.  Judy pulled off his shirt so he would sleep more comfortably, turning him over to get it out from underneath him.  “Good night, my sly fox.”

“Mmmmmmlove you,” he sighed and curled up.  Judy smiled and softly kissed his cheek, and as she went around turning lights off, locking the door, and curling up on the couch, she couldn’t help but play the mumbled words over in her mind.

Judy still hated romance films.  They were stupid and sappy and unrealistic.  She knew that life didn’t work that way; after all, her own love story was messy and painful and double-edged.  But maybe those romance enthusiasts had a bit of a point after all.

It was nice to be loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, please excuse any medical mistakes I've made in this fic. I'm far from a medical professional, and a quick google search can only help so much. I hope everyone is enjoying it!


	8. Lost

When he was young, Nicholas P. Wilde was subject to the abuse of a pack of vicious children.  Prior to that incident, he knew that the world was inherently good, that people treated others like they deserved to be treated, and that if you were honest and sweet and good you would receive that as well. 

His mother had never had much money, but she scraped every penny she had together to get him a uniform for the Junior Ranger Scouts.  He hadn’t expected it, had only told her he wanted to join because it was true and not because he expected her to do something about it, but when she presented it to him and he finally got to put it on he was so proud.

_Pride goes before destruction,_ his priest had said during Mass.  Proverbs 16:18.  When he was eight, they were just words that he didn’t understand, like most of what was said every Sunday morning.  But then he was nine years old and he attended the first part of a Junior Rangers Scouts meeting, and was muzzled in the dark by children he had called friends.

To this day, his mother thinks he attended the rest of the meetings of that year.  He couldn’t bear to tell her he wasn’t welcome.  And when he stopped going, they gave away the uniform…though he kept the handkerchief.  As a reminder.

That was when he began to become jaded.  He experimented at school, observing how others behaved around other children and comparing it with how they behaved with him.  It took very little for him to realize that the behavior at that meeting was not an isolated event.  He was _different_.  A _predator_.  But it was worse than just that, because even other predators did not trust him.  He was a predator, yes, but he was also a _fox_.  A liar, a cheat.

His grades were impeccable.  Nick Wilde should have, in fact, graduated valedictorian at his high school, but a carefully failed test or three made sure he would not be offered that honor; he couldn’t very well put the faculty in the position that they’d have to give it to a lowly _fox_.

He didn’t intend to go to college.  He was already getting by on the street—not that his mother knew that’s where all the money came from—but mom wanted him to have a college education.  She said it was important, had insisted it was even after Nick told her he was doing perfectly well without college thank you very much.

It was important to his mom, so he applied to ZSU.  His near perfect high school GPA was enough on its own to get them to accept his application, pending entrance exams of course (which he very nearly aced).  So he went to school, taking very little with him but a bag of clothes and his handkerchief, and majored in business.

After all, wasn’t it “business” that he’d been doing on the street since he was twelve?  Even if most of it went to mom, it was still business and he was still good at it.

Nick managed to get through four years of college in three, and when it was over with he had a brand new degree and no intention to put it to use.  He didn’t move back in with his mother, though; he let her think he was in an apartment of his own while he crashed with a short troublemaker he had met soon after getting into college. 

Finnick was good to him.  He’d bailed Nick out of jail a few times, and had managed to make problems with the law disappear.  Nonetheless, Nick got careful, got smart.  He stopped getting caught, and even if he was caught, he did things the _right way_ now.  Finnick laughed at him for it, but it was important to Nick to do things legally…even if it was still shifty as hell, not to mention slightly immoral.

Nick was twenty-six when his old priest died.  Father Tern, an old arctic fox, had been like a father to him, and had presided over almost every Mass Nick had attended for sixteen years.  He’d been over to the house countless times to counsel him, or to help them out with something.  Someone once told Nick that he was his mother’s cousin twice removed or some such drivel, but to Nick the man had always been a father, and when he died it destroyed the fox.  Nobody had seen it coming, and it took Nick a full year to rationalize it and move on from that pain of loss.

Nick still went to Mass.  But it wasn’t the same.

Nick almost got married one day when he was twenty-eight.  He’d been courting a vixen from his old neighborhood, had proposed to her after a year of dating, and she said yes.  They scheduled the ceremony for a day in June, six months hence.

She died in May when an aneurysm ruptured in her brain.

Nick, who hadn’t missed a single week of church since he was six years old, stopped going to Mass for nearly three months.  It was his mother who inspired him to go back:  she sat with him, cried with him, and gave him her crucifix.  He’d never seen her without it, and it was made of solid gold, an heirloom from her grandmother.

He would later add a medal of Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes.

After his fiancé died, he found himself unable to get close to anyone.  Even his relationship with his mother became strained, but she seemed to understand and didn’t push him.  His life on the street, however, became child’s play.  His empathy was what had always held him back, but he simply did not care anymore.  His refusal to actually break the law became a safety net instead of a moral stance, and he became exceptionally good at hustling.  It helped that he could read people so easily, of course, but there’s simply so much more you can do if you don’t care how you affect who you do it to.

He got comfortable with that life.  For four years, Nicholas Wilde was one of the best con animals in Zootopia, acknowledged by the city’s underbelly as someone who made hustling look like an art.

He still sent most of the money he made to his mom, of course, who had stopped asking him to keep it long ago.  She needed it more than he did, he’d always tell her.

But then one day Nick met a meter maid—excuse me, _police officer_ —who changed everything.  Her name was Judy Hopps, officer of Precinct One. 

He didn’t think too much on it the first time they met; he’d heard about them hiring a rabbit officer, of course, and wasn’t it just a pretty coincidence that he met her the day she started the job, but she was just a dumb optimist who wouldn’t last a week in this city.  Just like everyone else.  He told her as much and walked away, expecting it to never go past that interaction.

She did find him again though and pulled him into a forty-eight hour investigation that had him caring.  He actually honest-to-god cared about her, and sometime during that two days when he wasn’t looking she tore down the walls he had so carefully erected. 

That’s why it hurt so badly when she shot him back down during that stupid press conference. 

He was never one to sit and mope about, and he didn’t in the next three months.  His heart wasn’t in the jobs he was pulling and Finnick had to remind him to eat something a few times, but he pretended everything was okay.  Pretended he was his old self.

Pretended that he could live without Judith Hopps.

His relief when she did return to him, crying, pleading for his help and not expecting forgiveness—even though he’d forgiven her long ago, hadn’t had a choice—was staggering.  It was everything he could do to not let it show, to slip into the comfortable jokes and sarcasm.  And from there, they saved the town from a plot of terror, and in the process his handkerchief got Judy’s blood on it.

That was okay.  It added character to the old thing.

Nick decided when it was over to join the police academy as Judy had offered.  For nine months he trained and learned and broke barriers and when he graduated he stood tall, the very first fox in the ZPD.  It was thanks to Judy.  He had been a lost cause, and she came along and without trying made him into a better animal than he had thought he could be.  She sparked in him a desire to do good that had been lost when he was nine.

He hadn’t been on the force for a full month yet when she began dating someone else, and the day he had bucked up the courage to ask her out no less.  Later, he’d admit he reacted rather harshly to the news, but she was the first one he’d actually cared about in so long that it was hard not to overreact.  He would get over it, though.

And then she got shot.

Sometime between her being loaded lifeless into the ambulance and waking up the next morning, he had prayed, prayed hard. 

He lost his medal of Saint Jude that night, would never remember when or how it had fallen from his paws, but his bunny was alive and she was all he needed to survive.

Her recovery was long and difficult for them both.  It was two weeks before she was let out of the hospital and another two months before she was well enough to be allowed back to work (though Bogo insisted she use the rest of her medical leave).  Nick did everything he could to make sure she was cared for, especially after her girlfriend left her.  It was all he _could_ do, he owed it to her.  She had made an honest fox of him, gotten him off the street. 

That’s why he felt so dirty lying to her about getting beer the last night she was in his apartment.  He did actually end up getting the beer, of course, but only after he met with Jeff Rynge the raccoon to give him “insider information” about the precinct.  And of course it took a bit longer than anticipated, thanks to them asking for stupid clarification on simple crap.

Nick was tired.  And he was angry for having been dragged back into the bad life, and Judy was leaving tomorrow and he wanted to ask her out, to invite her to share his apartment because hers was tiny and he worried about her, but he couldn’t.

Because he didn’t deserve her.  And she deserved better than him.  So he resolved to keep his distance even as he fell asleep on the couch next to her.  He wouldn’t remember telling her in his sleep after she got him to bed that he loved her, and when she woke in the morning he’d go running with her and help her get her things back to her apartment.  And that would be that.  He’d do things right.

When he was a kid, Nicholas P. Wilde had been abused by a pack of children, and that had changed everything he would become.  Judy Hopps had helped him, but he was a lost cause and he could not drag her down with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When a question gets answered three more are raised! It's the nature of things, I suppose. Don't worry, all is not lost! Hope everyone enjoyed the latest chapter.


	9. Found

Judy woke early.  It wasn’t unusual; after all, she was a police officer.  Waking early was par for the course.  The difference this time was that she hadn’t officially been to the precinct in almost three months, thanks to an on-the-job injury and consequently hadn’t needed or wanted to wake early for awhile.  She was recovering, though, and quickly; therefore, her trained internal clock reasserted itself.

It helped that she was no longer living in Nick’s apartment.  Nearly a week ago, she had moved back into her own little apartment, and since then things had…changed.  Nick used to text her all the time, would reply to her messages virtually instantly, and would offer to come over regularly.  Since she moved back out, he hadn’t returned to those behaviors:  instead, he would rarely reply to her messages and when he did the messages were clipped.

Naturally, Judy was concerned.  So she decided it was time to give him a visit.  It was early afternoon on a Friday, which meant he would be at the precinct or on patrol, so she put on a simple ZPD tee and jeans and headed out.  The walk was a bit more than she was used to after so much inactivity, but she stopped in at the Stagbucks for a coffee on the way, being sure to pick up one for Nick.  Hers, her usual decaf with cream, was gone by the time Precinct One came into view; just seeing the building excited her, even though she wasn’t on duty.

Clawhauser was in his customary place at the front desk and noticed her enter.

“JUDY!” He squealed in excitement.  “What are you doing here?! It’s so good to see you, how are you?”  She had to laugh, but she greeted him and updated him quickly on her status.

“I’m looking for Nick,” said Judy when the pleasantries were done.  “You seen him?” 

“Oh.” Clawhauser pointed toward Bogo’s office.  “Meeting.  Not sure what’s going on.  Good luck.” 

A meeting with Bogo at two in the afternoon?  Frowning, Judy thanked Clawhauser and headed upstairs to wait for Nick outside the office. 

Nick was yelling.

“…can’t do this anymore!”  The fox’s voice was heated, and when Bogo tried to calm him, Nick cut him off.  “No, Bogo.  I’m done.  I won’t work for you anymore. I resign.  Here’s my badge.  Don’t call me.”  Bogo’s following yell for Nick to wait was for naught, because Nick stormed out of the office and breezed by Judy, who was just cresting the stairs.  Considering how close he came to running her down, she could only assume he didn’t see her standing there.

Nick resigned.  The news stunned her so badly that she was rooted to the spot staring after him for far too long.  So long, in fact, that it was him leaving the building entirely that spurred her to follow.  And follow she did, for she had some words for her dumb fox.

Finding him wasn’t as much a problem as it could have been.  He wasn’t trying to hide.  The problem was, Nick could be fast when he wanted to be.  He had an alarming ability to weave in and out of the crowd that Judy had never mastered, and so despite her speed she was doing all she could to keep him in sight.  Right past her apartment he led her, and right past his own, and through a seemingly random set of streets until finally, with a casual glance around, Nick ducked into a nondescript alley.  She resorted then to stealth to follow him in quietly:  the path continued on between the buildings for a half dozen meters before hanging a left, where Nick turned, paws in his pockets. Judy stopped at the corner, listening, and peeking around.

There were four other animals in the clearing ahead:  A raccoon, a wolf, an otter, and a leopard, none of whom Judy recognized.  Currently, the raccoon spoke.

“Your message sounded urgent,” said the raccoon, sidling up to Nick while the other three moved to surround.  “Didn’t expect you until tonight.”

“Yeah, there was a development.”  Nick spoke flatly, no hint of sarcasm or feeling.  “There was suspicion building.  I told you guys my snooping would be traced, and questions were asked.  I had to resign.  So I have this last package.”  He pulled something from his pocket, what seemed to be a USB drive.  Judy’s heart rate increased as adrenaline shot through her system.  She shook her head and bit her lip.

“Evidence room codes?”  This time the wolf spoke as the raccoon took the drive.

“Codes, layout, manifest.”  Nick put his paws back in his pockets.  “That should get you what you want.  I hope so because I’m finished; by tomorrow, I won’t be in the system anymore.  Hell, I might not be already.”

“Good work, Wilde.”  The raccoon turned to walk toward one of the other buildings, and when he snapped his fingers the other three moved to follow.  “Pricilla will be pleased.  Have a good life.”

Nick stood motionless watching them retreat as Judy stood rooted to her spot in utter disbelief, and he didn’t move until the other animals were well inside the building.  As Nick walked back toward Judy, she somehow had the presence of mind to look around and find something to hide behind.  She jumped behind a trash can just a moment before Nick rounded the corner, not wanting to be seen yet.

The problem with foxes is…they have a highly developed sense of smell.  So much so that Nick had barely passed Judy’s hiding spot when he stopped in his tracks and turned his head, sniffing the air.

“Hopps!”  In the same moment her name was hissed into the alley, Nick’s hand shot behind the trash can and lifted her clear off the ground by the back of her shirt.

“Let go of me!”  She tried to kick him, but the blows landed softly because she had no leverage. 

“Shut up and cooperate, we’re not out of danger!”  Nick didn’t drop her, and simply hurried to the street with her held off the ground.  Judy let him do so long enough to get to the street and in the crowd before she tried again, and this time her kick landed somewhere soft and Nick dropped her with a yelp of pain.

“What is your problem, Nick?!”  Judy stood at her full diminutive height, paws clenched into fists at her side and foot thumping.  Nick simply shushed her and strode off in the direction of his apartment.  Once again, Judy found herself trying to keep up, but once again he wasn’t trying to get away from her.  If he had been, he would simply have melted into the crowd.  No, he was leading her back to his apartment, and when he reached it he unlocked the door, slung it open, and looked back at Judy, who was just catching up.

“Inside!”  He pointed, frowning.  She went inside and rounded on him as soon as the door closed.

“You didn’t call.”  Judy’s voice started quiet but gradually got louder, and she put her fists on her waist in her anger.  “Didn’t text.  I go to find you at the office to see if you were alright, but I find out you’re _RESIGNING THE FORCE??_   And now I’m a litterer because I have no idea where your coffee went to—”

“There was a very—”  Nick tried to interrupt.

“I’m not finished,” snarled Judy.  Nick stopped talking, apparently taken aback.  “I tried to follow you to see what was going on.  I wanted to help.  But you’re **leaking police secrets to criminals?** ” By now Judy was screaming.

“You don’t understand!”  Nick yelled right back, but Judy didn’t give him the time to speak further.

“No, Nick, I don’t understand.”  Her voice fell to a deadly quiet as her violet eyes filled with angry tears.  “I don’t understand how you could betray that uniform.  How you could betray _me._   I don’t understand how you could change so much just in a few weeks.”

“Just let me explain, please?”  Nick pleaded, but it did no good. 

“No.”  Judy shook her head, her ears flat back.  “You can’t justify this.”  She shoved him aside, slung the door open, and started to walk outside.  But she paused long enough to look over her shoulder at him.  “Don’t call me again.”  The door slammed and she was down the stairs as fast as her little feet could carry her.

Her first task was to call Bogo and inform him of what she’d overheard.  There was a long pause on the other end.

“We know, Hopps,” Bogo finally replied.  “Come to the precinct.  Do nothing without checking in with me.”  Judy sighed.

“No, Chief,” sniffed Judy.  “I’m going home.  I can’t be involved.”  She ended the call, and went to her apartment to pack; she was unequivocally right: the little bunny was far too angry and hurt to do any good here.  She was emotionally compromised, too close to the situation, so she left it to the others and made an unscheduled trip back to the Hopps Family Farm.  She was, after all, still on medical leave.

When she walked out of her apartment to catch the train, her phone was left sitting on her desk.

* * *

Nick’s mother once told him, “the truth will set you free.”  But what happens when you’re prevented from telling the truth in the first place?

He had struggled with his role as automatic villain almost his whole life.  For more than twenty years, he had coped with it with the philosophy, “own the stereotype.”  As he had explained more than a year ago to an overly-optimistic rabbit, if everyone will see you as one thing, there’s no point in being anything else.  He had no choice but to comply; any attempt at free will was a lost cause because he’d simply be stuffed back into that box.  But Judy had changed that; she was his angel, his Saint Judy, and pulled him from the dark.  For a glorious year, Nick served and protected as he wanted to so long ago.

He couldn’t complain.  The last year had, for the most part, been incredible.  Alas, however, his past had caught up with him and it ruined everything.  If that had been the extent of it, Nick could accept it. 

But now Judy was involved.  She had run off without letting him come clean, and Nick couldn’t handle the thought that she could hate him. 

He understood now why Judy cried so long ago under that bridge:  Judy Hopps had become an integral part of his being, and now, faced with her abandonment, it was all he could do to keep breathing.  So Nick stood in his apartment in the wake of the shouting match and spent the time to carefully tape the pieces of himself back together into some semblance of working order before running out of the apartment to try to beat her to the precinct.  He knew shortcuts, so hopefully she wouldn’t beat him there and he could try to explain to her why.

All his care and haste was for naught, however.  Upon arriving, Nick went straight to Bogo’s office, expecting the bunny to be there telling everything…but she was not.  Instead, Bogo ordered him to sit.

So…he did.

“You’ve made a mess of things, Wilde.”  Bogo stood leaning on his desk, towering over Nick.

“I’m good at that, sir.”  Nick cleared his throat nervously.  “I need to talk to Judy, where is she?”  Bogo sat heavily in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You will not go after her.”  Bogo spoke heavily and with purpose.  “Give her a few days.  The weekend.  In fact, you’re not leaving this city until I’m certain our current situation is resolved.”  Then Bogo looked up and his eyes pierced Nick like lasers.  “Don’t make me put you in a cell.”

“Monday.”  Nick stood.  “I’ll give you until Monday.  And then I’m going after her.”  It was a testament to the fox’s steel resolve that Chief Bogo did not offer even a token argument before Nick walked out.

He knew, when he went back to his apartment passing Judy’s on the way, that the bunny had left town.  First was Bogo’s “don’t leave town” comment; but more damning was the dark window in Judy’s apartment as he passed.  Knowing that she had sought family offered a certain balm, because they could take care of her.  On the other hand, it was farther to go.  Needless to say, the weekend was a long one.

He had experienced periods of hunger before.  There were times he simply couldn’t afford food for days at a time, and so he went without.  He could honestly say, however, that he had never gone days without food and not noticed.  His nerves simply would not let him eat, his appetite was gone.  That didn’t stop Nick from checking Judy’s apartment the next two evenings and Monday morning.  The result was always the same:  dark window, silent apartment.

True to his word, Nick went to the train station immediately following his check on Judy’s apartment.  He ignored Bogo’s call on the way and purchased a ticket to Bunnyburrow without hesitation. 

It was only after the first hour that he began to get nervous.  He’d never met Judy’s parents, and he wasn’t sure how they’d react to his presence, especially after he hurt Judy.  It was too late to turn back, though.  So he waited, watching the tracks ahead intently.

It was easy to see when the train approached his destination.  For one, the amount of farmland was staggering.  For another, bunnies were everywhere; working fields, manning little shops, traveling along the road.  And then there was the quaint little station on the outskirts of the little rural town.  Nick got less attention than he expected when he stepped off the train.  Little enough, in fact, that he had to seek out someone to ask for directions to the Hopps farm.  They were well enough known, apparently, that the first bunny asked was able to point him in the right direction, and the walk was pleasant.

He’d never been out of the city, so he was glad for having to walk.  The sounds were different, the smells were strange, and it felt downright weird that there were no buildings all around him.  It was good to have time to acclimate.

The farm itself was not what he expected.  Mostly taken up by fields full of vegetation, the property was expansive and had a fairly large complex of buildings right up front; the residence was obvious, a hill-shaped white house to which the path wound.  Nick stopped at the door and took a breath before knocking.

It was a long couple moments before it opened, revealing a pudgy buck.

“You must be Nick,” said the bunny.  He sighed.  “I’m Stu.  You better come inside.”  He was led easily to a large kitchen, where a female stood making tea:  Judy’s mother, presumably.

“Bon, we have a guest.”  Stu sat at the table as Bonnie turned to look; she frowned and crossed her arms.

“You’re Nick Wilde.”  It wasn’t a question, or even a statement.  It was an accusation, and thrown as such.  Nick nodded.

“I had hoped to meet you under more pleasant circumstances,” said Nick, putting his paws in the pockets of his khaki pants.  He chose to speak the plain truth here, sensing it would be more effective than smooth-talking.  “I’m afraid I made some mistakes, and my errors in judgment…well.  I need to explain what happened.”  Bonnie stared him down for a long minute before turning to the tea and pouring three glasses. 

“Judy has been very upset.”  She handed out cups of tea to both males before taking a seat with her own cup and gesturing for Nick to sit as well.  “When she stops crying, she starts yelling.  I don’t even want to repeat some of the things she’s called you.  I think it’s best you told us the truth; then we’ll see if you can talk to Judy.”

So Nick told them.  He started from the beginning, as all stories should be told, and the telling of his history and how it led to this point took the better part of an hour, during which both rabbits listened without interruption.  And when the dust settled, Stu shook his head.

“You made a real mess of things, son.”  Stu looked him hard in the eye, and Nick nodded.  There was a long silence between the three of them as it was all absorbed and processed.  Then, Stu looked down at his paws clasped on the table.  “You know she’s crazy about you.”  Nick nodded.

“Why did you come all this way, Nick?”  Bonnie, contrary to her husband, was fixing Nick that piercing stare Judy had clearly inherited from her.  Nick stared back and answered with no hesitation.

“I love her.” 

The bunnies looked at one another.  There was some unspoken communication passed between them, and Bonnie stood.

“Come with me,” said the bunny simply.  She turned and led Nick down a series of halls to a bedroom door that could only be Judy’s, plastered with ZPD posters as it was.  “Say what you need to.  I need to check on the kids.” 

When Bonnie stepped away, Nick took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

“Yeah,” came Judy’s muffled reply.  Nick opened the door and stepped inside.

“Hey, Carrots.”  Judy, laying face down on a bed with grey bedspread, was completely silent and still for a minute, and when she finally reacted it was to turn over and hurl her pillow at Nick’s head.

“GO AWAY.” Her eyes were watering and glaring at the same time and she reached for something else to throw.  Nick didn’t try to stop her.  He simply clasped his paws behind his back and let her hit him with a cup, a stapler, six stuffed bunnies, and another pillow before she stopped, looking angry and confused.

“If you’re done throwing things,” said Nick finally, “I have some things to say.”  Judy stood up with her arms crossed and didn’t say anything, so Nick continued.

“When you went to see Lily that last time, I was approached by some old associates.  They told me that I needed to act as their inside guy in the ZPD, provide them with information on cases, layouts, codes, shifts.  If I didn’t agree, I wouldn’t have survived.”

“That justifies anything?”  To Judy’s credit, she didn’t shout so much as speak with a clear tone of what Nick would almost call hatred.

“Of course not.”  Nick shook his head.  “In fact, as soon as I was sure they weren’t following me, I went to Bogo.”  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Judy’s face, but she didn’t interrupt.  “See, Bogo has been trying to take down this particular crime group for a few years now.  He wanted me to feed them false information, stuff that would lead them into a trap.”

“But….”  Judy’s arms relaxed, falling to her side.  “Why wouldn’t you tell me that before?”  Nick took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and looked at the floor.

“Because.  You were still recovering, and I didn’t want to get you involved.”  He looked back up at Judy.  “I know these animals, and they’re dangerous.  You weren’t at one hundred percent, and I know you:  You would have insisted on helping.  I couldn’t risk it, and Bogo supported that decision.”

“Then why did you resign?” Judy had a suspicious look again, though it seemed almost forced to Nick’s practiced eye.

“Really?”  Nick looked at her, dumbfounded.  “I spent a month back in that life.  Even if it was fake, I didn’t like it.  And more importantly, I was lying to you.  I couldn’t do it.  I told Bogo I wanted out; he insisted I do one more exchange, so I told him I’m finished.  I wanted nothing to do with it.  The job isn’t worth it if I have to lie to you to do it right.”

Judy deflated.  Nick could see the exact moment her anger flowed out of her, and it was replaced with fatigue.  Her eyes, swollen already from crying, began flowing tears again and she took a shuddering breath.

“I-I thought you....”

“I know.  I’m sorry.” Nick took a step closer and opened his arms.  With only a second’s hesitation, Judy stepped into them.

“No more _secrets_!”  Judy punched him hard in the gut.  Then, she put her arms around his middle.  He embraced her, holding her tightly.

“No more secrets.”  It was a promise, spoken earnestly.  And since he promised…Nick put a hand under Judy’s chin and tilted her head up to face him.  “I love you, Judy.”

Judy started the kiss, and it was awkward at first as they figured out how their mouths fit together.  But then it was sweet, and intimate, and they felt the rotation of the planet beneath them.  It lasted for days and years and was over in an instant, and in the deafening silence that followed the two held each other tightly.

“I love you too, Nick.”

It was a promise, spoken earnestly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dat emotions doe! So yeah, this was a bit of an emotional chapter. Next chapter is more lighthearted but no less emotional, and will also mark the end of this fic. I hope everyone enjoyed today's update. Please don't hesitate to leave feedback!


	10. Triumph

Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps stood in a small bedroom in the Hopps home in Bunnyburrow, arms around each other, and they both understood in the moment that they were facing a situation that has never been seen before.  In the wake of their yelling and emotion-rich confessions, the silence stretched on for minutes.  Judy was squeezing Nick hard enough that he could feel her pulse, and he reveled in the heat radiating off her.

“I’m liking Casa de Judy, so far,” said Nick at last, as Judy’s tears slowed.  She laughed into his chest, then stepped back, wiping her eyes, and Nick surveyed the room.  He was too preoccupied when he first entered to notice much.  The bedspread of the bunny-sized twin bed was a dark graphite color, but much of the upper half was obscured by a hundred stuffed animals, mostly bunnies of various colors and styles.  Though relatively small, the room itself had twice the area of Judy’s old apartment.  In one corner was a writing desk with a cup of pencils, next to a wardrobe painted—like the walls—ZPD blue.  The floor was hardwood like the rest of the house Nick had seen.

And Judy stood right in the middle, staring at Nick in dawning horror.

“Oh god, Nick, I gave you a black eye!”  Her paws covered her mouth and she looked like she might cry.  Nick chuckled.

“Yeah, but I’m still the best looking fox around.” Nick touched the eye as he snarked; sure enough, it was tender and puffy where the stapler hit him in the face.  The joke did its job, making Judy roll her eyes instead of cry, and Nick bent down to pick up the stapler and cup from the floor.  “Really though, you have a great arm.  You managed to nail me from across the room, and sitting no less.  I’m impressed.”  He padded across the room to put the objects on the desk and Judy followed him, putting a paw on his arm.

“Nick, don’t.  I hurt you,” muttered Judy.  Nick put his other paw over hers and gave her a ghost of his signature sardonic smirk.

“I’m a big fox, I can take it,” he joked.  “And it’s not like I didn’t deserve it.  So I forgive you.”  Just then, a voice came from the door, which Nick had left open.

“Lunch is ready, kids,” said Judy’s mom, and when Nick and Judy turned to look at her, she wore an uncertain look.  “Nicholas, if you would like to eat with us you’re welcome to.” 

“Thanks, mom.”  Judy let go of Nick and walked out with a glance at Nick, who moved to follow her.  Bonnie stopped him at the threshold of the room, though, with a frown.

“Judy is a grown bunny, and she can make her own decisions,” started Bonnie.  “I try not to interfere.  She loves you, Nicholas, and I can accept that.  Judy taught us a long time ago to get over our distaste for your kind.”  The older rabbit’s face hardened, and Nick felt a shiver of fear go down his spine as she paused to fix him with that cold look.  “But if you hurt my daughter again, I’ll put your pelt on my wall.”

Nick took a breath to steady his nerves.  The bunny’s tone was as steel-like as her expression, and Nick absolutely believed that she was capable of carrying out her threat.

“I understand,” promised Nick solemnly.  “If it makes you feel any better, I do regret what happened.  I was trying to protect Judy, and…it didn’t work out so well.”  Bonnie’s glare relaxed and she nodded.

“Then let’s not speak of this again.”  She reached up to touch Nick’s cheek under the growing bruise.  “Go have a seat in the dining room, dear, and I’ll bring you something for the pain.”

It took Nick five minutes to find his way back to the dining room, and when he did he stood in the doorway in shock, eyes wide and ears back against the din.  The room was enormous with a dozen long tables all filled with rabbits of all ages, colors, and sizes.  At the head of the room was another long table with plates, bowls, cutlery, and more food than he’d ever seen in one place at a time.  It was mostly plants and fruits.  Pies, salads, casseroles, and the like, with rice and pasta dishes among it all.  There was also gallons and gallons of juice, tea, and water.  Judy, currently at the food table with three other younger bunnies, looked over spotting him, and crossed the room fetch him with a smile.

“Dining room?  It’s more like a mess hall.”  His words drew attention to him, and slowly the entire room fell into silence as all the rabbits began to notice he was there.  Judy’s smile widened in amusement an instant before every kit in the room began yelling about him or to him.  In fact, most of them left their food entirely and ran over to surround the doorway.  The reaction was not fear or anger or hostility as he might have expected:  instead it was excitement, all of them asking questions of him at the same time.  His paws raised before him in defense, and Judy took one of them in hers, their fingers interlacing.

“Okay guys,” yelled Bonnie from behind him, “its lunchtime, not ‘interview Judy’s boyfriend’ time! Back to your seats!”  As the children grumbled and dragged their feet back to the tables, Judy shot her mom a look.

“You eavesdropped!” scolded Judy. 

“I’m a mother,” retorted Bonnie.  “And you’re holding hands.  Nicholas, dear, take this.  It should reduce the swelling and prevent a headache.”  Nick took the offered pill with thanks.  “Oh, I didn’t know you’d be here this afternoon; I’m afraid I only have bunny fare.”

“It’s fine, Mrs. Hopps,” said Nick.  “I’m a vegetarian anyway.”

Lunch was, needless to say, pandemonium.  With Judy’s assistance, Nick navigated the food table and got a seat near the head of the room, directly across from her father, and Judy helped him handle the influx of questions from every nearby bunny kit.  The questions were everything from “are you related to Gideon” (whoever Gideon was) to “are you and Judy getting married” (a question which made Nick blush hard and Judy laugh), and Judy answered more of them than Nick did.  She was entirely at ease in the crowd, and navigated the influx of queries like a seasoned pro.

Eventually, though, the questions slacked off as the short attention spans of the children diverted to other children or the food before them.  By then Nick had worked his way through a plate and a half of incredible food; he had tried to stop at one plate, but Judy’s mother had insisted he get as much as he wanted; since he hadn’t eaten in several days, it took little persuasion.

For the twelfth or so time since sitting down, Judy put her right hand on his left; the contact only lasted a few seconds and seemed like an unconscious gesture, but each time it happened Nick’s heart rate increased.  This time, he noticed her father noticing it.  The two males locked gazes, Stu with an inscrutable expression.  Nick held his gaze with no sarcasm in his eyes…and then the moment was over as Stu looked away.

It took more than an hour, but the end of the meal was signaled.  Bonnie stood up, some sixth sense telling her that nobody was eating anymore, and began rounding up children.  Most of the older ones (including Nick, at Judy’s prodding) had taken their dishes to a large wheeled bin off to one side, so there was little cleanup left to do.  Nonetheless, once children started running every which way, Nick stood without a word and followed Stu as the buck went to push the bin to the kitchen.  They stood in silence as Nick rinsed dishes and handed them off to Stu, who loaded them in a huge, industrial-sized dish washer. 

They got through half the dishes before Stu spoke to him.

“I used to hate foxes, you know.”  The words were frank and unapologetic, and Nick didn’t respond, sensing the statement was rhetorical.  “A lot of bunnies do.  It’s instinct, you know?  Your scent triggers a fear response in us.  But last year, Jude showed us that we were wrong to shun your kind.  We’ve even gone into business with one of the foxes that lives in the triburrows area here.  Grew up to be a good guy, actually.  But I’m gonna level with you, Nick.  I’m not comfortable with you dating Judy.”  Nick handed him a plate and opened his mouth to speak, but Stu cut him off, continuing in the same level, conversational tone.  “Let me finish.  Now, I’ve spent a lot of years telling Judy to settle down and be realistic.  She’s never listened to me, and I don’t expect her to take any warnings I have about you to heart either.  She’d get mad at me, and she’d be right to.”  Stu stopped and turned to face Nick directly.

“I know that part of my problem is that you’re a fox.  I’m sorry for that, and I’m trying to get over it.  But you have to understand:  I’ve spent the last three days listening to her cry over what you did.  You’re on a short leash, here, Nicholas.  I won’t interfere, and frankly I like you so far.  But if you hurt my little girl again, you won’t get a chance to do it a third time.” Nick chuckled.

“Your wife threatened to put my pelt on the wall,” he said with a smile.  “I’ll tell you what I told her:  I’m sorry things ended up like they did.  I made a mistake, and I don’t intend to repeat it.”  Stu looked at him for a moment, then held out his paw.  Nick took it and shook without hesitation, then without another word they returned to the dishes.

The rest of the chore was silent, but it was companionable instead of strained.  Nick couldn’t help but to be impressed by Judy’s parents.  They spoke their mind, and they both had a core of steel that Nick hadn’t expected.  He resolved to not get on their bad sides; he’d rather anger Mr. Big.

The two had just finished loading the dishwasher when Bonnie came into the room looking for Nick.

“You’re spending the night, tonight,” said Bonnie; it was a statement and not a question, and she acted as such, walking up to him.  She gauged his size as she spoke, not giving him time to reply.  “We should be able to find a bed big enough for you, or maybe you can take the sectional in the den; I’m afraid you won’t fit in Judy’s bed, it’s too short for you.”

“Oh no, that would be preferred,” said Nick, raising his paws.  “I didn’t intend to share a bed with Judy this soon anyway.  I don’t mind staying for tonight, though, if you insist.”  He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.  “It’ll give me time to figure out how to get my job back.”  He did want his job back; he was mentally kicking himself for having resigned in the first place, now that he was in a more psychologically stable state.  It was true that Bogo’s assignments had strained his patience, but the trap was to have been sprung this past weekend, and anyway it was to bring a dangerous gang to justice.  Nick could only hope that Bogo understood.

“I’m sure you can do it.”  Bonnie put a paw on his arm in understanding and gave him an encouraging smile.  “It’ll take a lot of paperwork, but if that buffalo is as understanding as Judy says he is, you’ll get your job back.”

***

Judy, seeing that Nick had already gone to help her dad with dishes, helped the older kids to clean the tables and the floor while her mom took the younger kids to naps and playrooms and such.  Normally the kind to talk with her siblings, especially since she was always away now, Judy was uncharacteristically quiet as she went through the motions.  It didn’t seem possible how quickly her emotions had changed.  Just a short two hours ago, she was so angry and emotionally crushed at Nick’s betrayal that she could barely eat.  She was still angry at him for lying if she was honest with herself, but that was being drowned out by the swelling of pride and love.  It made everything smell sweeter, look brighter, and seem nicer in general.  She couldn’t stop smiling. 

She had wanted him—consciously or otherwise—for almost a year and a half now, and now he was hers at last.

That bright, warm feeling nestled in her breast lasted for the rest of the afternoon through discussions with siblings and parents about work and the city, letting them get to know Nick better, a dinner as chaotic as lunch, and then a film that evening.  It was dark by the time her parents had gotten all the rest of the children to sleep, and when finally that task was done, Bonnie came into the living room with pillows and blankets for Nick to sleep with in the den near Judy’s room.  Judy was a little disappointed when it was made clear that he was sleeping alone, not to mention a little affronted, so as Nick was settling in Judy took her mother aside privately.

“Mom, you know I’m twenty-five right?  I don’t see why I can’t be with my boyfriend tonight.”  She crossed her arms, but tried to look more concerned than angry; this was still her mother, after all.  But Bonnie smiled and shook her head.

“I know that, dear,” said her mother.  “He’s the one that wanted to sleep alone.  It surprised me, actually.  I guess foxes aren’t as physical as we are.”  This made Judy think; it hadn’t occurred to her, but now that it had been mentioned, Nick did tend to be pretty stand-offish.  Where a bunny would hug or touch a friend, especially someone to whom they were very close, Nick did not.  That wasn’t to say he _didn’t_ show physical affection; he certainly did, but only when it was particularly appropriate, and never for very long.

“You know…” muttered Judy, “you’re right.  I never realized it before.  He’s always been alone, so I guess it’s not something he’s used to.”  Her mother nodded.

“Judy, honey, you be careful with him.”  Bonnie put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at Judy with concern.  “Don’t move too quickly.  He’s a good male, but I think he’s a bit more fragile than he lets on.”  Judy, prepared to be angry at first, realized what her mother was saying and smiled, looking at the doorway to the den softly.

“Don’t worry, mom,” said Judy.  “I’ll be careful.  Good night.”  They hugged and Bonnie left after poking a head in the den to make sure Nick had everything he needed.  Judy entered the den after Bonnie went on her way.

The den might have been called a sitting room by other families.  It had a sectional sofa, a couple armchairs, and several bookshelves full of books of all kinds, and it was Judy’s favorite place inside the Hopps burrow as a kit.  The sofa was long and made of a rough, black canvas, the cushions soft and bouncy, and it was the only room in the burrow with a carpet.  On the walls were paintings, most being landscapes composed by her father.  It had been a place of quietude and contemplation for her.  And now, it housed a very handsome red fox who looked up at her as she entered and crossed the room to plop on the sofa next to him, right on top of the pillow he’d been given.  He raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t mind using you as a pillow,” grinned Nick, “but I can’t imagine it’ll be comfortable for you.”  Judy rolled her eyes.

“I’m not here as furniture, slick.”  She leaned into his side, and he put an arm around her.  “I actually wondered why you don’t want me in here with you tonight.”  She spoke casually, and Nick squeezed her for a moment when she finished.

“I do want you in here,” said Nick seriously, but with a comfortable smile.  “But I don’t think it’d be right.  Not yet.”  Judy hummed into his side in acknowledgement; she understood, and was not upset.

“Take your time.”  Judy leaned up and kissed him on the cheek before hopping to the floor.  “Good night, Nick.”

“Good night, my love.”  His sweet smile melted her as he spoke, and she turned and ran to her room to flop onto her bed fully dressed.  Judy took a moment then to squeal in joy before getting ready for bed and lying down.

She found, however, that she couldn’t sleep.  Three hours later, just after midnight, Judy rolled back out of bed with a sigh. She didn’t bother dressing, leaving her blueberry colored short shorts and grey tank top on as she padded down the hall to the den.  The overhead light was off, leaving a soft glow from a nightlight her dad kept plugged in in one corner.  It was enough light to see Nick curled up on the couch.  He took up only one cushion, because he was curled into a tight ball, his tail wrapped around his body and covering his muzzle.  Judy quietly approached him and lightly touched him on the shoulder.

“Nick,” she whispered.  His eyes popped open immediately.

“Wha? What’s wrong?”  His reply was also a whisper and he sat up rubbing his eyes.

“Couldn’t sleep; would you walk with me?”  He nodded and took her hand, following her out of the room.  She led him clear out of the burrow and across the field to the stream that marked the edge of the property, where she sat at the edge of the water.  Nick settled next to her, his tail wrapped around her waist.  They sat in silence for a couple minutes while he looked up at the stars and she ran her paws through the bushy fur of his tail.

“Are we doing the right thing, Nick?” asked Judy finally.  He didn’t answer for awhile, and Judy started to think he wasn’t going to before he spoke softly. 

“It’s never been done,” said Nick seriously, still looking into the heavens.  “A rabbit and a fox, together?  People will talk.  There’s still a taboo against prey and predator relationships.  But you’ve broken the mold your whole life, Fluff.  You were the first bunny cop; now you get to be the first bunny to date a fox.”  

“But what if we don’t work out?”  Judy kept fiddling with his tail, not looking up.  “What if we fight?  What if we get married and find out we actually hate each other?”  As soon as she said it, she expected him to take exception to the “married” part, but surprisingly he didn’t. 

Instead, he smiled, and looked down at her.

“We’ve spent almost every day with each other for six months, Carrots,” said Nick, putting an arm around her shoulders.  “And we lived with each other for two months.  I think we would have figured out by now if we hate each other.  We’ll definitely have arguments and issues will crop up, but we’ll get past it. We always do.”  She let that absorb in her mind for another long minute before speaking again.  He made a point, but she was still a little scared.

“What if you find someone else?  Someone you like better?  Another fox, maybe.”

“There is nobody else.” Nick’s reply was grave, immediate, and definite.

“But how can you be sure?”  Judy finally looked up at him, uncertainty all over her face.  Nick looked over at the crystal-clear water of the stream, then took a slow breath and let it out.

“Foxes mate for life, Judy.”  There was a small smile on his face and his right paw, the one not around Judy, grasped the crucifix from underneath his shirt.  “When we meet our own perfect mate, the one we are destined for, we know it.  I have never been more certain of anything in my life.  And if you find someone else eventually, I won’t stand in your way.  I’ll be happy that you’re happy.”

Judy was quiet, but she was certain her heart beat could be heard.  A smile crossed her face; poets would describe it as shining, beatific, or golden, but she just knew that it felt right.

“There’s nobody else,” said Judy, repeating Nick’s own words and putting her left paw over his, lacing their fingers together over her stomach.  He looked back down at her and, seeing her smile, gave her one of his own when she finished speaking:  “Bunnies mate for life too.”

There was nothing else to be said, and neither wasted the words.  When they wandered back to the burrow half an hour later, fingers interlaced, they went to the den together, and slept better than either had in a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,  
> That I shall say good night till it be morrow!
> 
> This marks the end of Highs and Lows. I've given some thought to writing a sequel set a couple years hence, but I'm not sure yet what the plot might be. Slice of life? Perhaps. I am working on the first chapter to a much darker version of the world, however; not sure I'll ever post it, but we'll see. 
> 
> I'm grateful for all the kudos and the comments, and I'm glad people have enjoyed this!


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